Creative Agent Sharing and Reflection Day

Lancashire 16th November 2010

Introductions
Alice: The purpose behind the day – to explore the question `How do
you encourage a culture which inspires? ‘
Jude: I want today to be a gloriously mad collaboration – a mini Hadron
collider leading to a particle of creativity.

First panel question: What holds you to

creativity? What motivates you?
Angela Aspinall: Described being a successful Head and having everything in
the school neat and tidy and perfect – and then one day looking out through the
fence around the school and realising that what was `out there’ was as important
as what was inside:
“My moral compass started from looking outside and seeing that terraced house
with the graffiti and the burned out car and realising that we had to look outwards.
The basis of creativity in the school is that it has to be inspiring, it has to be
adventurous, and it has to be what the students want to learn.”

Andy O’Brien: Described growing up in Wales and the influence of Max Boyce’s
poem `The Outside Half Factory’. This talks about the `bits of magic’ that happen
when a good rugby player emerges from the Valleys.
“It’s about trying to create those bits of magic for students and recognising them
when they happen.”

Two stories from his life as a teacher had influenced him:

1. Seeing a teacher teaching a first Math’s lesson by getting students to number
each page of a 60 page exercise book
2. Hearing a student react to the description of Wordsworth’s daffodils by saying
that he would `kick the heads off them’
Quotation: Against the ruin of the world there is only one event – the creative act.
[WB Yeats]

“You’re trying to create an establishment – the whole entire establishment – where

people can be creative.”

“I have no problem with the concept of the school being a factory – I do have a
problem with what is being produced in that factory.”

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Mark Burns: Described experiences in teaching which connected him to
creativity:
“I used to benchmark on the things you are supposed to do – and do them
differently.”

An inspiration was meeting a child in a very impoverished East London school

who, when asked to say what they wanted to be, said “An Olympic swimmer and
an author and an explorer”. Mark was struck by the extent of that ambition – and
what so often happens to it.

“Do we have to do it this way? If we don’t how else can we do it?”

Roger Hill: Described how, despite a very well resourced childhood being taken
to places and given the right things to play with, he gained creativity from
opposition:

“There is an original impulse that goes on in you. I had a mother who said no to
everything I wanted to do so I became creative at finding ways round that.
It links to your own momentum, your own moral compass. It’s a line which takes
you somewhere – you have to have the momentum, be well resourced, and be
motivated to travel along that line. I’m the kind of person who enjoys playing and
doesn’t like being told what to do – I tend to do the opposite. In this current media
digital world there is only on and off – for me, there is no black and white, there is
a middle space where creativity lives. For survival purposes I live in that space
and in work culture I make that space for other people I work with.”

Liz Beaumont - For Liz a major moment of inspiration was encountering the
Plowden Report 1967 during her teacher training:

“People were saying creativity, personalised learning, overcoming poverty,

involving parents – it’s all there [in the Report] in 1967.Since then nothing else [as
important]has come my way until the Cambridge Review of Primary Education last
year.”

Pat Cochrane - The factors that inspired Pat were:

“Social justice, the power of the imagination, a bit of bolshiness, the fact that I
grew up in the 60s as a woman...”

“Teaching experience had an impact because I couldn’t bear the fact that what we
were doing was squeezing people into what we could provide.”

“Seeing the impact of various arts sessions such as drumming session showed
her that the arts can change people’s lives and that’s what holds me to creativity.”

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Individual Questions to Panelists
Question to Andy.
How and why have you extended the work you’ve done at
Accrington Academy into national arenas?
Andy:
1. Because of my experience of professional development. It’s often not
been good for teachers. Where it has worked it has been dialogues.CP
has been a giant CPD experience for the whole school.
2 People talk a lot of rubbish about projects to make them sound
fantastic. 9 times out of 10 it is not true..I wanted staff to be able to get
to the nub of the problem.
3. Why move to being a School of Creativity? Because I want my staff
and students to go out and take the same mindset with them – I want
people to experience stuff beyond the walls. It shouldn’t just stop when
you leave the school gates. When you take something out of its
environment it can become something much bigger.
4. The National Advisory Group should not be an institution but a
movement. This [the CP ethos] could all fade quite quickly – we have a
responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Question to Roger
How is it that you are able to adapt and be flexible in such a
huge range of environments?
When in doubt I often do the I Ching – and it usually boils down to `Stay
Calm’! The same old advice usually applies `Go Backwards and Look
Forwards’ – re-acess the things that are important and go forward
because it isn’t nostalgia, it’s about moving on, moving forward. Go
back to where all the roads meet – re-examine that idea of mastery –
something you have done 10,000 times....retreat to that point where all
of your skills have formed and move outwards to what you can be.

Question to Mark
Can you tell us what it means to be `motivated and loving it’
and what interested you about it?
You look at what it is that defines us and how that moves us forward,
Passion – is this enabling, encouraging and nurturing passion in others?
It’s the power of feedback – being asked what we think, a journey to get
near, constantly exploring rather than arriving.
What keeps me interested? The love of being on the bus – as long as
the bus is steering in the direction of our passion.

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Question to Pat
What are the most significant changes you’ve seen this
programme achieve?
Where CP works well it is completely transformative- you can feel it
when you walk into the space.
There’s a huge resilience [resistance] in education to take things back
to where they used to be: it helps schools to open up the walls, work
beyond them.
In some places it doesn’t work so well and what you’re shown is a
project.
Really helps to motivate people. Conversation, mutual respect, genuine
listening but pushing the boundaries.

Question to Liz
How have you motivated and inspired your staff team?
A lot of young teachers have never known teaching that wasn’t
prescriptive – they’ve been trained under that relentless `teach, teach,
and test ’method, they don’t know the excitement of a creative
curriculum...
You have to hold on to your fundamental educational beliefs by your
fingernails...I‘ve tried to find ways within school of being a creative
manager.
Having a fantastic Agent really helps to motivate people.
I’ve been able to lead and motivate because of the quality of our
relationships with CP and with our Agent.

Question to Angela
How are you able to do all the leadership roles you do and still
have a life?
Angela told a story about Blondin – walking on a tightrope across the
Grand Canyon – everybody wanted him to do it again, backward,
pushing a wheelbarrow. He agreed but asked if anyone wanted to be in
the wheelbarrow! No takers....
It’s not just all about me – if it is we’re in trouble. It’s about fantastic
teams – people who have the same moral compass.
If you don’t say creativity is as important as literacy and numeracy
you’ve got a problem.
Angela related how she was told not to sing in the school choir but to
mime because she was singing out of tune and very loudly with
enjoyment
Let our children sing- it doesn’t matter how bad they are or what stage
they’re on – let them sing through life.

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Group Discussions
People talked about:
• Cohesion – how you make connections between political and
religious groups/schools that are in the same community but don’t
communicate
• How to motivate and engage teachers – how to move it beyond the
`little experiment’ the School coordinator is `allowed ‘ to do and take it
across the school
• Coaching or mentoring?
• The unacknowledged fact that many children have very good and
positive experiences of secondary school

Heading 3
Children of the sun, see your time has just begun, searching for your
ways, through adventures every day. Every day and night, with the
condor in flight, with all your friends in tow, you search for the Cities of
Gold. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah... wishing for The Cities of Gold. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah...
some day we will find The Cities of Gold. Do-do-do-do ah-ah-ah, do-do-
do-do, Cities of Gold. Do-do-do-do, Cities of Gold. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah...
some day we will find The Cities of Gold.

The Panel’s questions to the Agents

Andy: Creativity and Knowledge – can you develop them symbiotically
or it it one or the other?

Debate about coaching vs mentoring approaches

Mark: Sowing seeds: what are the qualities we are looking to develop
which will sustain the programme after changes?

Agents:
Challenge - questioning incongruity

The ongoing state of questioning and being, not just `on’ or `off’ in
Roger’s example

Mark: leadership, evolution rather than revolution, making converts,

doesn’t matter if they move on, people with charisma, able to distil
creativity, being able to infect others

Is creativity a virus or a bacterium?

Andy: What allows you to work effectively with teachers?

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Agents:
When you just let things roll, when you play
Professional respect, going both ways

Pat: are there key processes that are the core of the CP success that
don’t cost much money and could be presented to schools to buy
direct?

Agents:
Collaboration is the root of it all. Good relationships will matter and the
school’s experience of success
Pat: The process of enquiry makes the ideas travel – is what matters

Angela: How do we ensure that children continue to grow upon

transition?

Agents:
It’s what you give them inside themselves – self-belief
Transition is for the child – we need to fully understand what transition
actually does – lose some of the detrimental language like the term
`feeder’ schools in favour of `partner ‘schools – develop continuity of
curriculum – find a way of showing children how the curriculum
transfers – get over some of the professional barriers – there should be
much more cross-matching and dialogue between primary and
secondary teachers.

Ability based transition should help give continuity

Yr 7s should be the top of the school because they have just arrived
with all that positive experience although not every primary experience
is as good

Roger: How can you develop a diagnostic sense in education rather

than a prescriptive one?

What is the UK for at the moment? If we could answer that, we would

know what to do about our education system.

Liz: Succession planning: what’s the solution to the double edged

sword of the strong leader?

Governor involvement – getting interviewees for a headship to lead a

creative assembly on a cultural theme in front of the children so the

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pupils could judge them.