Year one was a year of exploration. Whilst we were an established network of schools in our academy trust who had worked on projects together before, we knew that we needed to explore the concept of creativity with our teachers and what that meant to each of them as a school, a teacher and an individual. On several networking days, teachers were given the opportunity to explore their own creative journey and what the barriers to teaching for creativity might have been in their own setting. With our evaluation partner Birmingham City University, we looked at existing frameworks and what approach we would take as a collaborative. Finally, each school began to work with our creative partners, Stan’s Cafe and Open Theatre, and looked at creative teaching approaches.
We established our overarching research question - How can empowering teachers to develop creative pedagogies, facilitate the environment in which learners are enabled to flourish and fulfil their creative potential?