Since the mid-1990s it's become a commonplace that the creative industries are vital to the UK's economic future. In addition, policy-makers place great stress upon the expanding role of creativity in the workplace and the importance of equipping future generations to survive in a labour market increasingly fragmented by globalisation, diversity and plurality. Creativity is seen to be the key. (1)
As teachers and artists who work in education, we're encouraged to be educating our students for creativity. The skills and qualities developed through participation in the creative process (identifying and solving problems, intra- and inter-personal skills, ability to transfer knowledge, progressive work towards goals, imagination and mental flexibility and so on) are seen as vital educational goals. Beyond the economic argument, and at a grass roots level, I know that participation in the creative process can help turn things around for young people. It raises self-esteem and motivation, and endows them with transferable skills, which will help them to earn a living in a fulfilling job whether or not they go on to work in the arts.
Yet teachers/artists operate in an accountability culture, with a prescriptive curriculum and increased burdens of testing. It's a system, which works against the creativity of both teacher and student. As good teachers leave the profession in droves, it seems imperative that we examine the relationship between creativity and learning as it is occurring in our schools and colleges.
I am making no claims to do this comprehensively here. What I will do is talk about two case studies from the work of the Arts and Media team at Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) in order to highlight some issues relating to this theme. I draw upon research from Pathways into Creativity, a three-year action research project funded by NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts). Begun in April, 2002 and led by Graham Jefferys, its aim is to uncover and eventually share and transfer the models of creative teaching and partnership, which have developed in the Arts and Media team at NewVIc. (The findings of the research will be disseminated in the spring/summer of 2004.)
New VIc is one of the largest sixth form colleges in the country, located in Newham in London's East End. Newham is one of the city's most culturally diverse communities, and also one of the country's most deprived areas. On the Index of Local Deprivation 2000, which provides nation-wide scores based upon unemployment income, health, education, housing and access to services indicators, Newham ranks third of all local authorities in England and Wales. In 2000 it was estimated that over half the population is from black and Asian communities, with the proportion higher among younger residents. (2)
Case study 1: Hair pieces
The local context is a key spur to creativity at the college. A large proportion of the students who begin Performing Arts courses have low achievement at GCSE or A level. The student body is often very diverse in terms of age, ethnicity, disability and experience, particularly on the HND Performing Arts in the Community, where I have found myself teaching dance technique to a fifty-something east end former bricklayer, now a wheelchair-user, alongside a grass-green eighteen year-old from Kent. A 'one size fits all' approach to teaching is impossible in this situation.
In response to this context the team has developed a project-based curriculum. Learning outcomes are delivered and assessed through live project work, which engages with the local community. For example, in 2002 staff and students in the HND year 1 group collaborated with writer Carl Reid to create a performance piece developed through extensive dialogue with local barbers and hairdressers. Entitled Hair Pieces, it incorporated their language and cultures, thereby celebrating the role of the shops as a local 'archive' of stories, inter-generational links and family/community ties. Students spoke at length with local hairdressers and barbers, who were also involved in giving feedback on the evolving play, which was performed at Stratford Circus. The project was used to deliver the whole of the curriculum for the second semester of the HND, as students also did the show's administration, design and marketing.
The research data supports the argument that such projects raise the stakes for students, as they're working in a real-life context, learning about their local community and taking responsibility for representation of aspects of this community. They ask questions about who is allowed to be an artist, whose stories are important and how those stories are conveyed. Students perform in a professional venue, manage their own budget and raise an audience for the show themselves. Extended collaboration with professionals in the creative and management process facilitates the transition between education and the profession. (It's worth noting that the project's writer, Carl Reid, is a former HND student.)
Partnerships are vital to this kind of work. NewVIc is one of five core partner organisations at Stratford Circus, the east London performing arts venue that provides a rich learning resource and environment for the work. Projects are devised with multiple outcomes that serve the needs of students, the college, the partners, the community and the artists. Hair Pieces, for example, was designed in close collaboration with the education team at Stratford Circus as a means of audience development and community outreach for the venue. (Clare Connor, a member of NewVIc's staff and a key architect of the project, was employed part-time Stratford's education officer.) Fusing shared objectives of organisations creates a direct vocational experience for students, which, again, builds bridges into professional practice. Several graduating HND students are now working with the core partners at Stratford Circus.
Case study 2: Home
Ambitious, curriculum-based projects such as this demands, alternative professional models for the practice of the teacher. On such projects teachers fulfil a number of roles simultaneously - tutor, artist/facilitator, project manager, mentor to other artists. The learning is based upon an experience of the creative process, with all its struggles and uncertainties. Teachers are released from the responsibility to be the source of knowledge, which must be delivered to students. Instead they martial resources, feeding a learning process in which they become a co-learner able to struggle with process while not necessarily knowing the answers.
NewVIc has a history of working in creative ways with teacher/artists. There is a continuum of ways in which teacher/artists work at the college, from a more traditional residency or project model to extended part-time contracts to full-time contracts in which hours are released from teaching through attracting additional sources of funding. In 2002 I was involved on an extra-curricular project called Home. Taking place over two years, it brought together ten artists and hundreds of participants from two countries to explore the notion of home. Three teams of artists (choreographer, film-maker and composer) collaborated with performers in three locations (east London, Taunton, Somerset and Washington DC) to make dance film and video pieces on the subject. At NewVIc three teacher/artists worked on the film: Anton Califano (film-maker), Robert Wells (composer) and me (concept/choreographer). Both Anton and I were released for a day a week to work on the film, thanks to funding from NewVIc, London Arts, Awards for All, Skillswork, Primal Pictures and East London Dance, a long-term partner in the dance-based project work at NewVIc. Our timetables were manipulated to release us from teaching regularly on the same day. Robert, employed at the college on a part-time basis, was drafted into our project on days he did not teach.
The cast of twenty-six with whom we worked were students from NewVIc, four local secondary schools and a local primary, their family members and two professional dancers. Other students worked as assistants in choreography, design and production. The film was produced by Dhiraj Mahey of Primal Pictures and shot by a professional crew, with trainees from across the programmes at NewVIc (including the industry-centred film school established by Anton Califano) and from local schools. NewVIc teacher/artist Angela Diskin worked with BTEC Art and Design students to create costumes for the film, which has subsequently been shown in festivals around the world. Participants have also spoken at conferences nationally.
Clearly the model of practice outlined above is only successful in an institution where the role of the teacher is seen as extending beyond the delivery of a set curriculum within a set time frame in a classroom. This is a key issue, as it concerns both the recruitment and retention of good teachers and ongoing teacher creativity. Project work allows teacher/artists staff - development opportunities, which encourages them to remain at the college. The evidence in the Pathways into Creativity research implies that there is a marked impact upon their professional standing and self-esteem. Released from a narrow definition of what being a teacher might be, the teacher/artists are able to redefine their role project by project, thus sustaining professional motivation.
The question arises, then, if facilitating the creativity of individual teachers impacts upon their teaching and the learning of their students. There is evidence that the work of the teacher/artists on the core curriculum was fed by the process of making Home. The artists have used their experience and what they learned on the project in their subsequent teaching. Students, meanwhile, respond to the 'lived' experience of the staff, the insider knowledge of the process of making the film, and the motivating force of seeing a successful film being fashioned in the same place and with many of the same resources that they use. (Again, the local context of NewVIc, with its potential to attract funding from regeneration initiatives, makes it a resource-rich environment). The data supports the argument that students view teachers as co-learners and role models, and that this enhances their own motivation. Students feel invested in the film as a learning resource, which in some sense they themselves own.
It would seem that facilitating teacher and student creativity feeds the educational process. The research also identifies a reciprocal artistic impact. Certainly the theme of Home was inspired by my working at the college, and by conversations with students who were recent immigrants. I had already established relationships with my collaborators through work on smaller projects. Our daily contact provided a space for us to dream, plan and argue together. Furthermore, the need to be accountable to the college for improving recruitment encouraged us to work with local feeder schools. Although very demanding, this process arguably embedded the project more deeply into the local community and made the cast more diverse. It also made the final piece stronger. The track record of the college in delivering such projects, and the multiple funding streams which it could access, meant that we were able to work on a scale which would not have been possible as independent artists.
Playing devil's advocate, there are valid questions about whether the resources required to sustain such project work (particularly as Home was extra-curricular) are justifiable in an organisation whose core business is to assist the highest number of students possible to learn new skills and knowledge and help them achieve qualifications. There are concerns about the workload placed upon the teacher/artists working on projects, and on the colleagues who cover classes and help with administration and management. There are also issues within the college concerning the reconciliation of college systems with flexible models of project management. (Ironically, the scale of the Home project was possible largely because it ran ahead of college systems. A retrospective 'catching up' is now occurring.) Finally there are questions about how practical these models of working would be in a school setting. Over the next year we will be working with Brockhill Park School in Kent to test their transferability. The more flexible curriculum and 'specialist' work of FE and HE institutions like this make it easier to deliver curriculum outcomes through project work. It will be interesting to see how a secondary school can respond to this agenda.
How do such projects as those described above move beyond the work of 'inspirational individuals' and become embedded in institutional practice? Can we reconcile a truly creative curriculum, which encourages and develops student creativity, with the need to be accountable? What are the implications for the professional roles of the teacher/artist and the school timetable, and for the former's training and continuing professional development of teachers and artists? Can the 'ecology' of network partnerships be managed in a sustainable way?
So many questions, so few answers, but such potential.
The Performing Arts curriculum at NewVIc seeks to be fully inclusive and includes Btec First and National courses, A levels in Drama, Dance and Music and the HND Performing Arts in the Community, validated by the University of East London, as well as contributing to a foundation programme in Creative Industries and a new BA Hons in Music, Culture and Technology with UEL.
You can contact Jo Parkes on joparkesdance@aol.com
For more information about Pathways into Creativity or the work at NewVIc please contact Rachel Fell on 0207 473 4110 or email rfell@newvic.ac.uk
References
1: National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, All our futures: creativity, culture and education, Department for Education and Employment, London, 1999]
2: source www.newham.gov.uk