Welcome to the Creativity Café: Developing a network of shared creative teaching practice amongst academic staff

This paper presents the findings and developments to date of a TQEF (Teaching Quality
Enhancement Fund) project on Creativity and Innovation in Teaching in Higher Education. The
purpose of this project is to develop and promote creative and innovative teaching across the
University.
Findings from the project suggest that academic staff want to share their creative and innovative
teaching with colleagues from all disciplines, and that, presently, little is known about creativity
elsewhere in the University. Creativity Cafés have been organised to give academic staff an
opportunity to work together informally, to share best practice and germinate ‘Communities of
Practice’ (Wenger, 1998) around four broad areas of creativity that have been identified.
The positive feedback from these events has been overwhelming and the sharing of good
practice has engaged staff with different perspectives of creativity across the curriculum.