During the first year of C Change's work the focus was on the conditions and language needed for creativity to thrive. This involved schools understanding the definition of creativity (we used the Durham Commission's definitions) and exploring what it looked like in their schools. We had knowledge exchanges with Bill Lucas, Louise Stoll, Pam Burnard and others to deepen schools' understanding of the global picture for creativity and the importance of creative leadership.
Each school has a designated creativity champion and they received training by James Mannion on practitioner inquiry. This training, up-skilled the champions to become researchers in their own classrooms. School leaders also received training on implementation science for schools to ensure the work we were about to undertake would be sustainable and embedded in all of the schools. Each school put creativity on their school development plans and some designed their own models for creativity based on Bill Lucas' Creative Habits of Mind.
We started to develop existing partnerships in Ellesmere Port and New Brighton to engage in hyper local work that would build on existing creative projects and created new partnerships with local councils, businesses and community leaders.
We held our first annual conference, which saw 130 teachers, creative practitioners and community leaders come together, to explore the language and conditions for creativity.
By the end of our first year we had established a strong network of schools and partners that were ready to explore deeper the importance of teaching for creativity on the educational experiences of young people.
©Liam Rose from HFCMAT