This is the title of a talk I gave to the new Children and Youth Research Centre, at Queensland University of Technology in November 2011.

I argued that recent years have seen an increased attention to learning outside the school. There have been high prolife State and philanthropic funding for  community projects or afterschool clubs  as well as in other forms of non-formal organised provision. At the same time, the home has a become a contested site for all kinds of educational experiences– a focus galvanised and  made problematic though the penetration of new digital technologies into the domestic sphere. Research and scholarship find it difficult to theorise and make sense of claims for learning in these ‘not-school’ environments’ as debate is often bound up with both techno-utopianism and generalisations about the purposes, effectiveness and success of public school systems.

This talk was based on on-going research in the England and Norway into  the ‘learning lives ‘ of young people trying to understand what it means to talk about learning in non-schooled environments as well as on-going writing surveying the research about learning out-of school. It focuses on the theoretical challenge of identifying and characterising ‘learning’ as framed in both of these domains as well as considering the practical difficulty of conducting empirical work to make sense of claims made for out-of-school learning.

In December 2011, I gave a talk to the Dusseldorp Foundation in Sydney, Australia at a gallery in Paddington. The talk explored how the idea of creative learning has been prominent in debates around education reform in recent years. Based on recent and ongoing research and experience around the world I will talk about competing definitions of what ‘creative learning’ might mean, how it has been recognised, evaluated and described, how it has been imagined and  implemented in practice, and how ideas of creative leanring are present in studies of learning outside the school, especially in the techno-cultures of the young.

The talk is now available online here.

I visted the Department of Cultural & Creative Arts at the Hong Kong Institute of Education in November 2011. I gave two talks there: on the creative workforce in Education in the UK; and on Creative Pedagogies. The first of these was based my work on Creative Agents for Creative Partnerships and the second on ongoing work for the Signature Pedagogies project (see Jan 20 2011 post).

I have just been appointed Honorary Professor in the Department of Cultural & Creative Arts at Hong Kong Institute of Education.

I have been invited to work as an associate of  the Centre for Research in Multiliteracies at Brock University, Toronto, Canada

This study of some of the artist workforce woking on Creative Partnerships programmes,  undertaken May 2010- April 2011 has just been been published by Creativity, Culture & Education. It is available here.

I have just returned from this event, Learning in the Network Society, held  by the Austrian Ministry of Education, in Vienna. I gave a talks entitled: Towards a new settlement: young people’s life-worlds, learning and school change. I tried to bring together 2 key discourses of change in recent Education Policy and Research, ‘The Creativity Agenda’ and research around Digital Cultures, in order explore how both fields – which in different ways have a new and distinctive sense of the agency of young people – influence and are influenced by contemporary change in Schools.

The volume has been reviewed in the International Journal of Education & the Arts.

Along with Pat Thomson and Naranee Ruthra Rajan I am the series editor for books aimed at  classroom practitioners at Key Stages 2 and 3 who are interested in developing creative learning and teaching in their schools. Each book is supported by Creative Partnerships and offers suggestions, models of practice and stimulus material for CPD sessions. The emphasis is on practical, accessible studies from classrooms framed within jargon-free understandings of key issues and principles found in more academic studies. Studies are complemented by accounts from learners, capturing pupil voice and making clear the benefits and values of changing approaches to learning.

A description of all volumes in the series can be found here.

The first volume in the series by Ethel Saunders Leading  a Creative School has just been published.

This volume co-edited with Pat Thomson, Ken Jones and Liora Bresler has just been published by Routledge. The book develop the premise that the concept of creative learning extends far beyond Arts-based learning or the development of individual creativity. It covers a range of processes and initiatives throughout the world that share common values, systems and practices aimed at making learning more creative. This applies at individual, classroom, or whole school level, always with the aim of fully realising young people’s potential.

Until now there has been no single text bringing together the significant literature that explores the dimensions of creative learning, despite the work of artists in schools and the development of a cadre of creative teaching and learning specialists. Containing a mixture of newly commissioned chapters, reprints and updated versions of previous publications, this book brings together major theorists and current research.

Comprising of key readings in creative education, it will stand as a uniquely authoritative text that will appeal to those involved in initial and continuing teacher education, as well as research academics and policy specialists.

Sections include:

• a general introduction to the field of creative learning
• arts learning traditions, with sub sections on discrete art forms such as drama and visual art
• accounts of practice from artist-teacher partnerships
• whole school change and reforms
• curriculum change
• assessment
• evaluative case studies of impact and effect
• global studies of policy change around creative learning.

I have just added my thoughts to this collection. Its an interesting project – not just for the people who have contributed but I am intrigued by the question of why a manifesto now, at this point in time? What is different about this community form the media education cadres of fifteen to twenty years ago? How are their visions different from the radicalism of older reform agendas?