Recognising and building upon exciting and culturally relevant creative learning opportunities for young people, Creative Partnerships is the first joint creative education programme between the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Education and Skills. It has the support of both the creative and cultural sectors and is regarded as the blueprint for the ways in which our children can be educated to embrace the challenges of living and working in the 21st century.
On June 3, 2003 the Rt.Hon Tessa Jowell MP, Secretary of State, Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Rt.Hon Charles Clarke MP, Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills led a conference in London called 'Collaborate, Create, Educate'. Its purpose was to endorse creativity in education, improve the quality of school life for young people and encourage the ethos of collaboration. During the day six young men and eight young women from yr12 in Brockhill Park School, Kent took to the Barbican Centre stage, performing two sensitive, intelligent and highly skilled pieces of contemporary dance in front of an audience packed with educationalists and cultural experts. The response was extremely enthusiastic. With weepy eyes the woman next to me remarked how she wished her 14 year-old son had been given the opportunity to dance 'like that'.
This is exactly what the work of Creative Partnerships Kent is about. It is not one-off classes provided by external agents (which of course have value in themselves), but rather the job of creating sustainable opportunities for young people to dance, write, compose, make clothing, design buildings and whatever else they aspire to in a manner 'like that'. Well, 'like that' takes time. It requires a committed school, an exceptional cultural partner, quality delivery, a variety of skills and an understanding, by all involved, of the climate needed to enable creative learning to take place.
Despite a great desire for Creative Partnerships Kent to take all credit for the fantastic dance at the conference - we cannot. We were merely brokers in a group of people that included Brockhill Park Head Teacher Tony Lyng; the school's inspired Dance Teacher and Director of Community Arts, Jackie Mortimer, and her three-person support team; Tim Vinall, Head of Performance Music; and their cultural partner, the international musician and sound artist Robert Jarvis.
Europhonix began not as a dance programme, but a sound project-taking place in three schools across Kent over seven long, full weeks. Young people were working with Robert, whom Creative Partnerships Kent had commissioned to compose and record a sound installation on CD to be played on a Eurotunnel train journey under the English Channel itself. This was to be the regional launch for Creative Partnerships Kent. We wanted a project that exemplified our intended practice with innovative content, challenging methodology in educational delivery and, lastly, a sustainable set of partnerships between the schools and the creative, cultural and, in this instance, business sector.
The process by which Robert worked with young people was a blueprint of that outlined very elegantly in Gill Clarke's article, Towards the Rigour of the Imagination (Animated, winter 2003). The children applied imaginative and independent thinking to a purposeful objective that had a valued outcome, taking risks in a climate of trust. By the end of the process, thinking differently and asking better questions, they had produced an extremely high-quality CD with a very sophisticated content.
So what has this to do with dance? Rumours of something even more interesting going on at Brockhill Park began when I heard that Robert had gone to the school and complained about the quality of their sign with an almost dogged relentlessness. Far from being offended the teachers were quite amused, in agreement and up for debate. I also heard that he'd infiltrated teachers' rooms and minds and, in particular, that he'd been debating creative teaching and learning with Jackie by generally challenging her classes and asking a range of unpleasant, difficult questions.
This was decidedly interesting. One of the great, unexpected outcomes of placing artists and organisations together within the education sector is that new relationships get made and odd-shaped ideas are explored, often with innovative results. The kind of dialogue in which Jackie and Robert were and, indeed, still are engaged is the core of partnership and change. Robert was keen to see how Jackie worked and how the climate in the dance studio might be creatively stretched, while she was keen to explore his ideas within the complex context of curriculum demands and the particularity of Brockhill school life to which he was exposed.
After much talk, Robert took up Jackie's suggestion that he bring the work of his young musicians into the dance classes. For me, it was moving to see young people responding through dance to a piece of music produced by their peers. As part of our launch, Jackie and her students worked on a piece in response to the composition entitled Europhonix. The young dancers interpreted the music's themes of 'home, journeys and away' with grace and skill on, I might add, an impossibly small French stage.
I interviewed Jackie at length about the experience of working with Robert on the project, wondering if what happened had differed from the norm. 'The making of the Tunnel Dance for Europhonix was necessarily fast,' she said, 'and mostly done in a single day because the decision to include dance in the launch came very late. For that reason the collaboration was limited. And yet I felt so informed about what had brought the music into existence, basically through witnessing its creation, that it did actually seem like a collaboration. Robert suggested what he felt was the most suitable track for dance, and I agreed.'
Not all of their exchanges operated so smoothly. 'Since the making of this piece,' Jackie continued, 'we've had many discussions about creativity, often related to dance. We discussed ways in which music is analysed, because knowing about a piece of music and its structure is central to a successful response to it. During one of Robert's visits I was working through some quite clumsy notation of the music, which I felt would be a handle for the students to grab. He had plenty to say about how I might be imposing my view on them. I'm sure this is right but, given the constraints of time, exam pressure, and the need for a starting place, I argued that my way was necessary. I'm now thinking there might be another way...
'We've also had many discussions about the role of teacher/artist. I think I'm both. I'm not sure Robert agrees, so that will be material for another interesting debate! Motivation is another topic we've only touched upon. Why move? Why stand still?
'I believe that Robert will allow me to think as an artist, in an educational environment. I also think he'll find the fury and speed of our school environment challenging. But I've yet to see him ruffled by anything, so perhaps he can teach us all to be still and quiet at least once a day! We both believe that enjoyment and happiness are important components for lessons and for student success. This common ground is a great place from which to start.
'Robert has already given me an objectivity, which I've found hard. I am passionate about my job, the students and the school, and find it difficult to look critically at the work we do. I've begun to step into that messy place where I know I'm going to have to get more uncomfortable in order to move forward. I hope we're brave enough. I know that the students will be. Already they are much better at risk-taking, and I hope we have the nerve to follow!'
Jackie's energy regarding future dance developments at the school is contagious. 'Robert has begun work for us for next term, spending time with me and some potential partners from The New VIc who are well down the road in pursuing the creativity debate. We hope to test the transferability of some of their ideas and successes, and also to share some time and energy together. He's also begun talks with the choreographer Jamie Watton, with whom we hope to collaborate next year. Jointly the things we are discussing are so exciting and so out of the normal remit of schools that I am already looking forward to September.
Creative Partnerships has taken us on a journey this year. It has been the most exciting of my 27 years of teaching, and I feel we are just at the beginning. If you are a student at Brockhill Park School now, you are truly fortunate!'
I know that Robert will continue challenging Jackie as to how much the creativity lies in the hands of the teacher or the pupil. I know that Jackie will argue about how to give skills to young people so that they can actually be creative. I am also convinced that this rather 'messy' place is actually the most important place to be, with two different disciplines coming together to pose better questions and find pedagogic solutions that may be temporary, transitional and an exciting learning experience in and of themselves.
There is a natural fear of the messy. Inevitably we're all inclined to fall back on systems that we know give a desired outcome, especially in cultural and creative education where the results - be they academic exams or a cultural product - get measured by others, often with financial reward or penalty. It is much harder to embrace the unknown and explore the complicated arena of real partnership, which always takes longer to develop and a lot of confidence to pursue. But I would argue for the negotiation of that messy arena every time, without which we'll continue to promulgate what we know rather than what might be known, thereby treading water rather than moving artistic or educational practice forward. If everything is clean and tidy there's an implicit assumption that we have arrived at the end of knowledge and practice, when in fact we should always be looking to improve all we do and how we do it.
I like to think of a project in Creative Partnerships Kent as a necklace, the thread connecting a series of gems. The Europhonix CD and its attendant dance piece were just the first of the gems. After this experience we can lengthen the thread. Robert will return to Brockhill Park, working with Jackie and other teachers over the next academic year. He'll be resident in a variety of ways - as dedicated musician, stimulating mentor and astute observer - and we'll research alongside him and the staff to continue our attempts to determine how and why things change in the school. As we know they will, because the purpose of placing cultural quality into an educational environment means that immediately one engages with a greater range of multiple intelligences, difficult questions, challenging opinions, alternative practice and independent thought. That is what culture in general, and many good artists in particular, do well. They challenge what we know and make us look at things from a different perspective.
We already know that the young people who took part in Europhonix have changed the way they're thinking and learning. Tim Vinall explained to me how the pupils that were involved from across different classes and year groups took their own learning back to their classes and have impacted on other students. 'The effect on the students involved has been marked. They are now thinking for themselves, and creatively, both individually and collectively. They're already displaying thinking and team - working skills, which are far beyond those of their peers. To use a phrase, they're 'thinking outside the box'. The skills they've acquired will undoubtedly make them more successful across the curriculum and, more importantly, in life. There is no question that they have a head start.'
Brockhill Park has put the work of Creative Partnerships into their delivery plan. The School is concerned with developing the creativity agenda, offering better life and learning skills to young people. We know this will affect the curriculum and the approaches to teaching in the school. We know that their partnership working will develop and become more profound as the school becomes more practised (at pursuing a range of ways to engage with local cultural colleagues, maximising what everyone has to offer. What we don't know is what the outcome will be, but it's very exciting. If I sound evangelical about this, it's because after many years of watching many different methods of approach I have finally witnessed a strategic way in which the teaching and learning of young people and adults has been transformed. Not for an hour or an afternoon through an enjoyable session, but for their entire lives. I want all of our children to have the opportunity to have experiences 'like that'.
Anna Cutler can be contacted by telephone on 01843 294 783
Creative Partnerships was designed and funded as a pilot programme from 1 April 2002 through to 31 March 2004. This phase has a budget of £40m and covers schools in 16 areas. These areas were selected by Ministers and taken from a list of the most economically and socially challenged neighbourhoods in England.
First phase Creative Partnership areas: Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham; Birmingham; Bristol; Cornwall; Durham/Sunderland; Inner London East; Inner London South; Kent; Kingston-upon-Hull; Manchester/Salford; Merseyside; Norfolk; Nottingham; Slough; Tees Valley; The Black Country.
In the most recent Comprehensive Spending Round in July 2002, the Rt. Hon Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that Creative Partnerships would be given the financial investment to continue beyond the original 'pilot programme' date of 2004. DCMS has committed £70 million to continue to support the existing 16 Creative Partnerships and to develop 20 new Creative Partnerships over the next two years. CP will roll out to nine new sites in Phase 2 and a further eleven in Phase 3.
To contact Creative Partnerships visit www.creative-partnerships.com