Creativity & Culture
Developing an education for the 21st century
“Ability comes in many forms and should not be defined only by traditional academic criteria,” claimed the 1999 government report All Our Futures, Creativity, Culture and Education (page 6). So, how far have we come in the past nine years in seeking to develop the talents of all young people to build a true enterprise economy for the 21st century?
Funding from government and the National Lottery has helped to transform the cultural facilities in our cities (page 9). In many schools across the country, through organisations such as Creative Partnerships, young people are being exposed to culture and creativity more than ever before, and are finding new ways to work together and link subjects across the curriculum.
Participants in the Round Table discussion (page 21) underlined how creativity is something that pervades all aspects of the curriculum, not just those areas that are traditionally thought of as “creative” subjects, such as music, art and drama. Rather, creativity is a way of life and vital to the learning process, whatever the content of a lesson.
What we need to develop, it seems, are the skills to teach in this way and the space or “slack” to allow creativity to take place. And then we need to work out how to assimilate that into assessment, accountability and qualifications.
