Since 2002 Creative Junction have worked in active partnership with over 400 schools and creative professionals to support creative teaching and learning across the curriculum. Together we have enhanced practice and bought about significant changes in school ethos, ambition and achievement. Creative Junction provides:
• ongoing tailored support from our experienced, trusted team
• access to high quality CRB checked creative professionals who are skilled in schools partnerships – from dancers to digital artists, song writers to sculptors
• connection to an active community of schools and education experts, all interested in creativity and innovation
Practice
• access to a large, nationally recognised body of work and resources
• a respected, tried and tested framework for the development of creative learning
Programmes
• bespoke partnerships, projects and professional learning and training delivered in ways that work for your school
We deliver international, regional and local programmes with young people, artists and educators. We also deliver bespoke projects for early years settings, schools, extended schools and local authorities.
Creative Junction Associates have over twenty years experience in education and arts management. We bring the expertise from working as Advanced Skills Teachers, Local Authority Advisors, Senior Managers and Heads of Department. We have a proven and trusted track record in offering active support to teachers, artists and young people working in partnership and are skilled in idea generation, sensitive brokerage and manageable approaches to evaluation and dissemination.
Contact us for a free consultation team@creativejunction.org.uk
“Our participation in Creative Partnerships through Creative Junction has been transformational for the school. We have learnt much, built networks, broken down ‘subject silos’ and created a much more creative and risk taking approach to teaching and learning.”
Assistant Head Teacher, Secondary School, Reading
Over the last nine years, Creative Junction delivered the flagship Creative Partnerships programme with over 200 schools across Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes. Creative Junction has ensured that the best practice from across this national programme continues to inform the way we work with schools.
For example, Creative Junction’s approach allows for experiential learning; teacher training taking place in the classroom and teachers learning from other professionals, in this case artists, as argued for in the Government’s recent Schools White Paper ‘The Importance of Teaching’.
In 2011, The National Foundation for Educational Research found that involvement in Creative Partnerships had a profound impact on teachers’ professional and personal development, learning, teaching and leadership skills. The independent research conducted with over 2,000 teachers found that:
93% of teachers felt Creative Partnerships contributed to their professional development with 62% reporting it had a greater impact than other professional development programmes.
76% of teachers said Creative Partnerships gave them an enhanced enthusiasm for teaching and 80% said it gave them the confidence to try new ways of working that help children to be more creative.
86% of teachers reported that working with Creative Partnerships in schools helped them to develop skills for working with creative professionals and 43% of teachers said that the programme had changed or enhanced their career.
In 2010, OFSTED reviewed 18 Creative Partnerships schools across the UK, including two secondary schools working with Creative Junction.
Learning: creative approaches that raise standards found that “partnerships were planned to complement schools’ mainstream curriculum made a positive contribution to pupils’ learning and personal development” and recommended that schools:
• balance opportunities for creative ways of learning with National Curriculum coverage
• provide continuing professional development to ensure that teachers and support staff have the knowledge, skills & confidence to encourage independent & creative learners
• support and sustain partnerships that have the potential to develop pupils of all abilities as confident and creative learners
They reported that delivery organisations such as Creative Junction had taken “effective steps to:
• review and revise systems for supporting participating schools in developing creative learning.
• improve clarity, rigour and coherence
• clarify roles, linked to planning and evaluation, to ensure that interventions are realistically aligned to pupils’ starting points and meet the needs of specific groups
• ensure substantial scope for pupils to contribute to decision-making and review
Creative Junction works with schools in the following ways:
Vision and direction about arts and creative learning with heads and senior leaders
Exploring your vision and supporting you in implementing change
Supporting self-evaluation and action planning
Audit and review of creative learning; linking with schemes including Artsmark
Project management and brokering of partnerships
Develop and support partnerships with teachers, learners and arts organisations/creative professionals: exploring ideas, recruiting partners, planning and monitoring
Information, advice and guidance on funding, resources, partnership working
Support groups of schools engaged in projects on shared themes such as Forest Schools, curriculum change or digital innovations
Develop international links and projects to celebrate London 2012
Professional learning
INSET on creativity, creative learning and teaching and curriculum innovation
Action Learning sets for leaders
Coaching for leadership at different levels
Support for teams, such as teaching assistants, departments, year groups, who are looking creatively at how they work and plan for change together
Support for individuals engaged in action research into creativity and learning. This is sometimes linked with accredited programmes in higher education such as post-graduate study
Training in evaluation, action research and dissemination
Bronze and Silver Arts Award training www.artsaward.org.uk
Training and support for young people
Philosophy for Children
Training young people as creative observers and leaders in their school
Supporting students researching into their own learning
Developing young people’s voice in school leadership and local democracy
Arts Awards Bronze, Silver and Gold
Links to creative learning best practice
Introductions, seminars and sharing events to link with leading creative learning practice in schools, universities, arts and other organisations, locally, nationally and internationally
