Charles Clarke, Secretary of State for Education and Skills, writes on the importance of creativity in education.
Picasso didn?t invent Cubism by slavishly copying other artists. Newton didn?t come to his conclusions about gravity by thinking along straight lines. Both were creative geniuses, unafraid to challenge the accepted views of their time ? and the world is a richer and wiser place for their discoveries. Not everyone can be a Picasso or a Newton, of course, but everybody can benefit from a creative approach to life and learning.
Creative Partnerships
Last month the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell and I announced a £70m package to boost creativity in schools. Arts Council England will use the money to develop 20 new Creative Partnerships over the next two years. This is in addition to the 16 pilot schemes already up and running. Creative Partnerships is a government-funded programme giving schoolchildren in deprived areas throughout England the opportunity to develop creativity in learning, and to participate in cultural activities.
It works by developing long-term partnerships between schools and cultural organisations. These include museums, galleries, theatre companies, historic buildings, dance studios, orchestras, new media companies and many others.
New thinking
In the past ?creativity? has often been thought of as an alternative to high standards in literacy and numeracy: something that happens during playtime, not part of the serious work of the classroom. This attitude is outdated. Creativity in education is not an excuse for a free-for-all, or for a relaxing of the drive to raise standards. On the contrary, creativity and excellence go hand-in-hand, reinforcing each other and pushing up standards.
Creative Partnerships will help schools do this by using the potential of individuals and organisations in the wider community who can release pupils? creativity, whether they?re from an arts, science or engineering background.
Creativity is no less essential to the sciences than to the arts. Coming up with a new piece of technology, or a new application for an existing process, means thinking beyond what has been thought before. Look at space exploration or medical science. The idea of putting a man on the Moon, or finding a vaccine for polio, is just a dream until it?s made a reality. It?s pie-in-the-sky, cloud-cuckoo land stuff. Until a small team ? perhaps with the doubts of colleagues ringing in their ears ? sets out to prove that it can be done. Everything is impossible until it has happened.
Proof positive
It really does work. The Qualifications & Curriculum Agency recently concluded a three-year research project into creativity in the classroom, and discovered that pupils? language and number skills were enhanced by teaching that promoted their creativity. They also found that such teaching only required minimal changes to a teacher?s normal planning and practice. Creativity doesn?t demand massive alterations to the curriculum or to the way teachers teach. The opportunity for pupils to be creative is there already, in existing lesson plans and approaches, and can be brought out by activities such as drama, simulation and problem-solving exercises.
We need new ideas if we?re to face the challenges of the 21st Century. Nobody knows what the future holds, but we can be sure that if we are to prosper and lead rich and fulfilling lives, our young people will need to be increasingly creative and inventive. We must encourage our dreamers; but we must also give them the resources, the hard facts and the solid materials to build their dreams upon. Nothing can be built on nothing. So we?ll be continuing to insist that schools keep testing pupils, and keep on driving up standards.
Picasso was an academically trained artist, and his later styles, however radical, all build on established principles of colour and form. Newton studied at Cambridge. Creativity flourishes outside educational institutions, certainly, but the combination of a formal training and the permission to imagine, to investigate the limits of the possible, is unbeatable.
For more details of the Creative Partnerships initiative, including a list of those areas already covered by Phase 1, see the website at: http://www.creative-partnerships.com/about.html