Building Creative Capacity in Staff and Students

This project resides in the Research into Practice strand of TQEF, because it was built upon a foundation of research and practice in Enhancing Access to Personal Creativity that the team had been carrying out for several years. That foundational work was with artists, mainly writers and performers, and was delivered through workshops and summer schools between 2002 and 2005. Project 3b offered an opportunity to test the transferability of the skills and principles from that work with a wider participant group. We wanted to maximise the benefits to the University of having Drama staff with these skills, and to extend the University’s collective understanding of, and access to, creative modes of working.

Creativity is an emergent, highly transferable, quality that strongly relates to personal effectiveness. All of the work on the project has been about enabling participants to do their work more effectively, and with greater degrees of innovation (where appropriate), energy and enjoyment.