Stimulating Creativity

The role of Creative Agents and creative partners

  • Date:
    17 August 2009
  • Categories:
    Articl
  • Introduction:
    Long-term collaborative relationships between creative professionals and schools lay at the heart of our Creative Partnerships work.
  • Article:

    Creative Agents played a key role in the delivery of our Creative Partnerships programmes with schools. They helped to deliver the programme and broker relationships between schools and creative practitioners.  Our Creative Agents worked at the cutting edge of learning and practice. 

    "Entering a school as the creative agent, I have that sense of expectation as the lights go up.  At times the platers work as a perfect team, and sometimes the creative energy goes and they pull apart; it's always exciting as the players are making their own story.  I am helping to clear a space for the creativity to grow.  A few hundred years ago a space would be cleared by the players with a broom, sweeping the stage is still an important job; so watch out for me on my broomstick..."

    By working with creative professionals from many different disciplines, young people can develop a variety of skills and experiences. Creative practitioners have different expectations of young people and when these are set high, young people prove time and time again they are capable of rising to the challenge.

    Creative professionals also benefit from working in schools. By being exposed to new voices and different views, they are challenged and their personal creative practice is enriched.

    What was a Creative Agent?

    When a school was accepted by Cre8us to take part in one of the Creative Partnerships programmes, they were assigned their own Creative Agent.  This creative professional then worked closely with the school to help them shape their own bespoke programme with a clearly defined purpose.  The Creative Agent's key role was to support schools in embedding creative learning across the organisation, so that innovative new approaches infused and shaped curriculum development, professional development of staff and the enquiry focus of the school.

    Creative Agents relied upon their own practical experience of 'creativity', and acted as a catalyst, able to respond to a school's specific dynamic, rather than applying a pre-determined process.  Whether from arts, culture, education, science,  or other sectors, their key skills lay in their ability to challenge and support new practice in the field of creative learning.

    The 'critical friend' role had the greatest potential to enrich the programmes taking place in schools, so it was key to establish a constructive and positive relationship between the Agent and their schools. 

    For more information on the role and skills of the Creative Agent, and to read some of the profiles of our Creative Agents, please take a look at the Agents section of the website.

     

    What role did the creative partner (practitioner) play?

    Creative practitioners were contracted by the individual schools (with the support of their Creative Agents) to work with them during the course of a project.  Cre8us were keen to work with a broad spectrum of practitioners and successful project have involved: artists, musicians, scientists, architects, designers, engineers, marketing experts, cooks and even landscape gardeners!  This mix of professionals ensured that projects could be designed to appeal to a broad range of interests and learning styles.

    Creative practitioners were able to share their personal creative journeys with young people and could demonstrate pathways into careers in the creative sector.  The practitioner was able to relate to young people in ways that were different from the teacher/pupil relationship and was usually characterised by a greater degree of informality, openness and negotiated practice.  Modelling risk taking as a positive opportunity and helping teachers move out of their comfort zone into less familiar territory was equally important.  Careful planning, while maintaining the capacity for spontaneity, created the conditions where risk could be embraced and 'disciplined innovation' could thrive.