Supported Curriculum Development

Bruce, Senior Officer Cultural Services and Jill, Arts Centre Officer described what emerged as a result of policy changes in terms of their offer or offers of engagement to Enderby. They spoke of a reduction in available resources and continued commitment to the ethos of creativity.

It’s fair to say our continued strategic offer (under the Coalition Government) was based on a sophisticated knowledge of our schools. We were interested in ongoing validation of creativity and maintaining partnerships, perpetuating and supporting that outfacing culture. But we did have less engagement with schools than during CP; there was a shift in funding and our capacity to engage. (Bruce)

We didn’t have near the levels of funding as before so we developed a website called ‘Chartered’ which is our educational resource…… the website has enabled us to put a lot of the content that came from Creative Partnerships, Find Your Talent and the Arts in Schools Programmes together so that we could offer it back as activity sheets, lessons plans, and link it back to the curriculum and just open people up about being a little bit more creative … about how they might deliver it. So we took the ethos of creativity forward and built on it. And we were able to do that in terms of the Arts and Creativity programme with the North Tyneside Council who are still a key partner for us. They enabled us to offer a strategic model, if you like, to a small number of schools who then invested in the model and addressed an area of enquiry that was important to them. Enquiry is a big thing, it’s still a big thing, using enquiry models as ways of achieving something….

outcomes, process, but also products the school might need in terms of their school improvement plans and school development plans. But it’s always about creativity for us, it’s still about creativity and how you can have an impact in the curriculum in terms of the creativity agenda. (Jill)

One strategic offer i.e. ‘scheme’ Jill spoke of was launched in November 2011 and can be seen as the social actors attempt to sustain enactment of

creativity as legacy within new policy environments. Schools, including

Enderby, were invited to apply to a ‘new scheme’, but the offer was arguably

partners informing schools of the opportunity, overtly reverberated with familiar creativity rhetoric of New Labour and Creative Partnerships.

Building upon the methodology established through the successful Creative Partnerships process we can offer five Arts in Schools opportunities over the 2011/12 academic year customised to the needs of your school through your development plan.

Projects will follow the Creative Partnerships Enquiry Model, in which schools identify an area of improvement and draw upon the skills of an artist to work alongside the staff team to develop practice.

The key to the Enquiry School approach is collaboration. The school, creative professionals and young people, help to bring the curriculum to life, providing new ways to engage with subjects and develop increased motivation for learning. The programme will allow time for in-depth planning co-delivery and reflection.

Extracts – Arts & Creativity, Arts in Schools Pamphlet

This was a language and underpinning ethos Enderby understood and believed in. It was somewhat serendipitous that Enderby was offered an opportunity for support that aligned perfectly with their curriculum development ambitions and embedment of creativity. Assistant Head

Teacher Lucy described how the Creative Arts team at Enderby responded to the opportunity.

It was perfect timing so we put an application forward saying we had been an active and pioneering CP school since 2004. We talked about the programmes previously worked on such as the Magnificent Seven and that staff and pupils were actively engaged in pilot activities to inform our creativity curriculum strand. We clearly stated that we had significant creativity ambitions to further but to make progress we needed external coaching. We acknowledged that expert advice, guidance and practical ideas were needed to support our teaching staff in developing the strand. (Lucy)

Enderbys application, perhaps unsurprisingly, was successful. As Bruce, Senior Officer Cultural Services, suggested the school remained in the forefront of partners minds.

When you think about schools and their willingness and capacity to engage, well……Enderby always comes to mind. (Bruce)

Enderby entered a Coalition arena of policy enactment, engaging with their partners as one of the ‘five’ selected schools. Their success validated an almost seamless continuum of curriculum development and experimentation involving creativity at Enderby.

Within their application, the school requested ‘expert’ external guidance to support the schools ambition to embed creativity in the curriculum.

Significantly, the recruitment and selection of a ‘creative consultant’ to fulfil this role was undertaken collectively. The criteria of services required, fee and appointment timeframe, were mutually crafted and agreed by Enderbys’

staff and partners. Language used in the brief provided to interested

candidates reflected the partners shared values and beliefs. Phrases included

‘we believe that creativity is the most important transferable learning skill that a person needs for life now and in the future’, and ‘we know that creativity is crucial’. ‘Ingredients’ of creativity’ were summarised in the brief as

encompassing effective team working, risk taking, enquiring, confidence, courage to work independently, enterprising.

Lehrer (2012) suggested that despite ‘clever studies’ creativity could not be summarised and that it ‘remains mysterious as we can imagine things that only exist in our mind’ (2012: 86). There was no such mystery within the brief as the ‘expert sought’ was required to ‘demonstrate a strong understanding of current and past thinking in creative teaching and learning and future possibilities’. The brief was explicit in stating Enderbys’ ambition. The phrase

‘fundamentally we believe creativity can be taught rather than simply facilitated’ was used. Taught creativity was a new concept and

developmental within Enderbys’ curriculum, fundamental to embedment.

Museum Director David suggested this was a positive move forward.

The new curriculum could only be seen as a good thing really, very fresh, a very exciting, engaging thing for the pupils. (David)

Anita, a self- styled ‘Creativity Coach’ was appointed to the role of ‘expert guide’ for Enderby. Anita spoke of her approach to the brief and services required by Enderby.

When they asked me to write a letter to, I suppose, put my brief on the table, right from the beginning I said that actually I wouldn’t be going in with any answers, I would be going in as a sort of facilitator and coach, because I thought that they knew answers. That’s the standard I’ve taken throughout the whole of the project. I have given information, I’ve mentored, but I’ve mainly used coaching styles and coaching methods, to just get them to answer their own questions, and empower them, and give them ownership.

(Anita)

Jill, Arts Centre Officer, spoke of Anita’s role of ‘expert guide’ for Enderby aligning to the style of support offered through CP, i.e. a ‘Creative Agent’.

I think the role of a creative aid, bringing a creative agent-type in….. and I think it’s fair to say that Anita was a creative agent-type person in the arts and creativity programme …. that really helped to spark ideas and thoughts and broaden things for Enderby, and helped to bring other staff along. (Jill)

Jill’s perception appears to affirm that Enderbys’ partners wished to embed established rhetoric and practice, colluding with schools in this process, whilst simultaneously responding to changing policy landscapes and policy

enactment. Enderbys’ teachers were also willing to raise their heads above the policy parapet and experiment with a new ‘subject’ during a period when creativity had scant legitimacy in education policy terms. Assistant Head Teacher Lucy spoke of the role she believed partners played in

validating Enderbys’ ambition, against a backdrop of policy implementation prohibiting such action.

We are adding creativity to our curriculum at a time when most schools are going through deficit cuts, budgets, funding cuts, and they’re having to take arts and things off the curriculum. And our partners have helped up maintain that belief and that this is the right thing to do and they have been there.

(Lucy)

Creativity Coach Anita suggested that Enderbys’ engagement with external partners and involvement within initiatives was influential in their desire to sustain creativity in the curriculum.

Initiatives such as CP did have an influence on them, because they also through that got valuable CPD, and that continued professional development made them reflective learners who weren’t sitting still and wanted to move on and two of them in particular got huge amounts from that. So, yeah, there was an impact from that, there was a legacy from all the work they did with Creative Partnerships and the Baltic and they’ve done projects with the SAGE. It’s a huge influence, yeah. (Anita)

According to Jill, Arts Centre Officer, Enderbys’ participation in the scheme supported their established culture and ethos of risk taking.

Anita supported the school really well, but like she said they had all the answers, it was just working through how they were going to measure creativity and how they were going to get together as a team to do that, put some things in place, but they did have all the answers. And I think it’s a confidence thing with people. No matter what changes you’re going through, there are going to be people that are more confident and it’s more in their comfort zone than others, but they all showed a level of risk taking, that they did have this team approach and I think that’s extremely important when you need to be moving things forward. (Jill)

Creativity Coach Anita believed that whilst Enderbys’ teachers moved forward and shared a common aim and vision for ‘taught creativity’, a shared language was more elusive.

They had a common aim, the common aim was that they all believed in it, they believed in creativity, but they felt that they jumped straight into it without having time to plan properly. The one thing they didn’t have at the beginning was any sense of a shared language. They had a shared vision, but didn’t have a shared language. So, in fact, they were giving different messages to each other and giving different messages to the children that they worked with. I had to establish, they created the shared language, but then they all had to understand what it was they were trying to say and how they were trying to say it (Anita)

Over the spring and summer school terms in 2012, Creativity Coach Anita supported members of the Creative Arts team in devising and shaping the content of the bespoke curriculum strand.

In the field, it was my ambition to observe first-hand interaction between teachers and pupils collectively ‘experimenting’ with creativity as a taught subject. Illumination of enactment as legacy and embedment of creativity was made possible through Enderbys’ staff allowing my presence in school.

Whilst the scope of my interest in creativity at Enderby was broad, the field work narrowed to following one teacher and one class in particular over an agreed period of time of a ‘school year’.