Creative Learning – look back and look forwards

The picture with this post is a fragment of a huge canvas produced by the team I work with from a project we did with the Manchester Camerata earlier this year.

If you key in “Creative Learning” into the search box on this blog you will find a series of posts written over the last 18 months or so where I document the work I have been leading to experiment with creative approaches. This work was carried out to build a highly productive team and to identify techniques that are transferable to the strategic work we are doing to build a strong research culture and infrastructure.

To date we have had two iterations of the Creative Learning Academy. In the last week, we have received an evaluation report for the second iteration. This looked at the work we did with a writer in residence, musicians, artist, composer and improv / comedians plus film makers documenting the work we did.

Three key messages that resonated from the evaluation are:

• Being involved in the various activities had a real impact on people, not just in their daily work but in a more profound way too.
• The lack of structure was really difficult to handle. Being involved in something organic with open-ended expectations was thrilling and scary at the same time. Participants were constantly looking for certainty.
• Future plans should continue to push the boundaries but we do need to be really focused on outcomes and impact.

It was really interesting that even though the remit was very clearly set out as emergent and we were really clear with the creatives and the participants that we didn’t want to nail down the outcomes because that would have removed the experimental nature of the work, people still felt the need for this certainty.

It’s also interesting that there are such paradoxes and tensions within these findings. We need to really think about how we handle that.

I wrote a while back about the next phase of this work and explained that the plan is to call it the Creative Learning Incubator and experiment both in the existing areas as well as new ones. Plans for this include:

• Further work with comedy and improvisation where research teams can develop their message for new audiences.
• Visual Reporting techniques using cartoonists.
• An emerging theme around mindfulness.
• Further use of art work as a method for sharing narratives
• More work with creative writers looking at how narrative can be built into research findings.
• Possibility of working with Puppeteers to explore use of these techniques.

There are a couple of other areas that we are also exploring which are still at very early stages. If any of this strikes a chord with you, is something you could help with, or is something you have a story to tell me about, please do get in touch.