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Creativity Collaboratives Update

In this week’s update, we are spotlighting our research partner for the Creativity Collaboratives programme, the University of Exeter.

The Penryn Partnership now moves into its final year of the Arts Council England’s Creativity Collaboratives programme. The project, and its research, is funded by the Arts Council, with support from the Freelands Foundation, and began in October 2021. At Penryn College, the project is led by Mrs Childs, with the research study led and facilitated by Associate Professor, Kerry Chappell, and Ursula Crickmay.

The Penryn Partnership is one of eight national pilots, building a network of schools that will test a range of innovative approaches to Teaching for Creativity. During Year 2, across the Penryn Partnership schools, a network of 13 teachers from primary and secondary schools led collaborative research projects, and the University of Exeter researchers gathered information about their findings.

Indeed, they have found notable increases in both teachers’ abilities to facilitate creativity, and students developing creative skills.

Kerry Chappell and Mrs Childs

Associate Professor, Kerry Chappell, said: “Having worked together during Year 1 to develop an accessible framework for researching creativity, we were delighted to support the teachers last year to apply it to carrying out their own research. Across key stages and disciplines, their reports gave us insight into how it’s possible to teach for creativity. The fact that our research synthesis was also able to demonstrate widespread developments in both creative teaching and students’ creative skills shows that the Creativity Collaboratives project has impact and could be scaled up nationally.”

Mrs Childs, who leads the Penryn Creativity Collaborative, said: “We developed our classroom practice grounded on our research findings from Year 1. It has been inspirational to see the transformation in teachers’ classroom practice and the resulting outcomes from our young people. We now want to encourage and support teachers and leaders to develop the teaching of creativity in their own schools, both here in Cornwall and through our national networks.”

We will continue to share our journey this year. If you’d like any further information, please e-mail us on creativitycollaboratives@penryn-college.cornwall.sch.uk