Creativity In Education
Project Outcomes:
- Enhance children’s learning experiences across the curriculum, through creative approaches, cultural participation and partnerships
- Give children the chance to express themselves, test and apply creativity skills and share their work with others.
- Improve children’s ability to recognise and articulate their own skills and potential, through innovative arts and creative learning experiences.
- Demonstrate Aberdeen is a city without creative barriers where children and schools can experiment with and be transformed by the arts, creativity and culture.
- Provide a creative space to allow pupils to shape their own learning, demonstrating individuality and uniqueness.
- Health, wellbeing and engagement in learning; promoting self-esteem, inclusion and eagerness to take part and learn.
- Development of employability and META skills; recognising and progressing the skills that are valuable to learning and the future workplace, not matter what age you are.
These outcomes have been developed in response to the National Improvement Framework, Scotland's Creative Learning Plan, relevant Aberdeen City Council LOIP and informed by the ongoing Creative Learning team work with city schools.
Creative Classrooms
Creative Classrooms is an innovative, pilot programme designed for educators and PGDE students. It aims to empower teachers and university students to take more creative risks and feel more confident in developing their creative skills to embrace and nurture creativity in their classrooms and within their own practice.
This Is Northfield
This is Northfield, is an Aberdeen City Council programme which will deliver four artists’ residencies within Northfield Academy from early 2023 until spring 2024. Working with artists on projects themed around Creative Northfield, Resilient Northfield, Health and Wellbeing and What’s Your Treasure?, the programme is engaging with pupils, teachers and the wider school community to explore, discuss and celebrate the school and its community, whilst improving students META Skills and learning experience.
Happy & Healthy Learning Together
The recent SHINE Report highlighted that young learners in Aberdeen are facing poor mental health, negative body positivity issues and have a perceived fear of the future.
Creative Learning, together with Hazlehead and Ashley Road Primary Schools, developed a design thinking based project, to improve health & wellbeing for all. Four local Freelance Artists led the project along with the pupils to discuss the issues raised and develop a project to help express our young people’s thoughts and fears.
Arts Across Learning Festival
Creative Learning are currently progressing the Arts Across learning Festival for 2020, a celebration and exploration of the arts and their value to learning and teaching. The festival brings a stimulating wealth of learning experiences to spark imagination and enthusiasm for learning to nursery and primary pupils and their teachers for free!
This year’s Arts Across Learning Festival will take place from 24 February to 6 March 2020. Download the festival brochure to see what was on offer:
Through a range of art forms, the festival will present alternative and engaging approaches to inter-disciplinary learning. This helps enable children to deepen their learning, express themselves, recognise their own abilities and share their learning with their peers and parents. Festival learning opportunities are delivered by experienced artists, companies and educators who work with Creative Learning to ensure that activities are designed to meet festival learning outcomes.
Ahead of launching this year’s Arts Across Learning Festival, Creative Learning are delighted to share the impacts from the Arts Across Learning Festival 2019.
The Arts Across Learning Festival continues to inspire learning and teaching, focusing on creative thinking and doing. The festival promotes imagination, curiosity, open-mindedness and problem solving and encourages children to develop and recognise their skills across these areas. This report indicates the impact the festival has on children and teaching and includes case studies giving a flavour of festival activity across pupil engagement, local partnerships and resources and working with local arts providers.
The festival programme would not be as varied and interesting without the participation of the many artists and companies from both Aberdeen and further afield. Partnership working across services and sectors helps make the programme what it is – and continues to see the festival go from strength to strength.
Supporting Communities
ABZ Works – No one Left Behind
Creative Learning deliver one to one sessions or small group creative workshops, enabling and empowering Young People (15-25), who are not in education or employment, to improve their personal and employability skills.
City Centre & Beach Masterplan Creative Consultancy
Creative Learning and StreetsUK were joined by Creative Practitioners at the Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen to create an active learning space to explore urban design proposals for Aberdeen’s City Centre & Beach Masterplan.
Fit Like? Hubs
‘Fit like? Family Wellbeing Hubs are a group of services working together with children, young people and families in Aberdeen to support their mental wellbeing.
Our creative programme aims to ascertain what may be holding young people back and help them find strategies to overcome barriers to learning, whilst working holistically with others and building positive relationships between themselves, freelance artists, Hub staff, and their families.
Camp Geronimo
An artist-led play opportunity for children and their parents in Aberdeen city. Strengthening family relationships, building confidence and learning new skills together through creative play, family support & the arts.
Supporting Creative Practitioners
Sustaining Life As An Artist – Working With People
Creative Learning commissioned Glasgow CAN to deliver their Participatory Arts Short Course (PASC), a unique vocational training programme. We collaborated to develop a bespoke offer tailored to the needs of the ten individuals signed up to the professional development programme.
VACMA 2023 – Visual Artist & Craft Makers Awards
The Visual Artist and Craft Maker Awards (VACMA) are a programme of small grants schemes delivered with a range of local authorities and art agencies across Scotland to support Scotland-based visual artists and craft makers in their creative development.