The London Development Agency have commissioned me to write a provocation essay reflecting on how or whether we can establish a framework for the role of the Non Formal Learning Sector (NFLS) as part of the overall ’ecology’ of education and training in the creative and cultural sector. I will review the history, reach, and effect of the NFLS and analyse the mixture of qualifications/regulation, skills and training policies and market trends in order suggest a rationale, and objectives for the continuation of national or regional support. I am aiming to offer the LDA a clear coherent and co-ordinated role if the LDA is to continue to work in this area.

In September I led a delegation from Creative Partnerships to speak at Network 2007, a conference of US Arts educators in Oakland. We described research exploring the effect of Creative Partnerships on school change and also on the cultural sector. Comparing and contrasting an initiative like CP with other similarly motivated but differently imagined creative education projects was challenging and will result in the development of a few comparative projects.

Creative Partnerships have just published a piece I wrote for them comparing CP to other New Labour initiatives in Education and outlining some of the difficulties inherent in the challenge of defining the impact and effect of large scale education reform programmes.

I am working at the University of Oslo with the research grouping TransAction. The group is bringing together research about learning, knowledge and identity and aims to develop a better understanding of the relationship between formal and informal learning processes and learning arenas among children and young people with special reference to knowledge devlopment and identity construction. I am working with the group to develop a research bid to investigate these ideas in practice.

I spoke at a session of the ESRC Seminar Series – Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures. I explored how the notion of informal learning is mobilised in discussion about learning, play and educational policy especially in relation to the ways we talk about new technologies and learning outside the school – in the home and in peer culture. I surveyed some of the ways that the notion of Informal Learning has been defined and used in research about children and media culture as well as discussing problems in defining the term. I ended up by describing how Informal Learning is used in debate about changing sites of learning in educational policy, in the consumer marketplace and in learning theory and concluded by drawing parallels in the way Informal Learning is used to how the idea of the new literacies were developed with similar strategic and political aspirations.

I am working with Kate Oakley on a project aiming to characterise the nature of creative work. As a result of being involved in a number of research initiatives which imagine creativity as output of the education system and, to an extent a property of individuals, I am exploring the reverse idea: whether it might be better to think of creativity more as a product of the work process. This project is very much a pilot project and aims to get us to reflect on how we can actually research creativity at work and what this might mean. What would we look for and how can we capture it?

I am attaching a 1 page PDF which describes the project to date and there will be more to follow
Creative_workforce.pdf

This month I am speaking at a European and International Research Symposium, called Evaluating the Impact of Arts and Cultural Education on Children and Young People with my colleague David Parker from Creative Partnerships (CP). We will be reporting on the methods we have developed to be able to capture the impact of this programme and how we have tried to move the research and evaluation framework for CP towards a more meaningful understanding of impact and effect. The paper we wrote as well as a video of the proceedings is available through the symposium website.

My current project is describing and theorising the business support provided by WAC Performing Arts and Media College to new or young businesses. This initiative is aimed at start-ups in the creative and/or cultural industries and offers mentoring and incubation facilities. Most of the businesses are led by young people from ethnic minorities. As part of the The Last Mile ( an EQUAL project) I am analysing the effectiveness of these sorts of interventions and thinking what it means to be in business as a creative career choice, since it is obvious that most of the businesses supported are more than just attempts to earn income or make money.

I am speaking at the DREAM conference on Odense in September. I will argue that informal learning has become a way of describing the value of digital technologies but that the term has no real meaning – there is only learning . If we are really serious about changes to the nature of learning in the current era, then we have to find ways to make informal learning mean more in policy terms

I have just finished my chapter for the 2006 Review of Research in Education for the American Education Research Association. The chapter takes a critical look at how theories of learning have been used to rationalise, justify or explain the meaning and pleasure of media culture amongst young people in contradistinction to school. I want those people who think that media culture has won the ‘competition with schools to think again about what this means for the politics of education. Publication details for Volume 30 can be found here.