Teaching Creativity in Schools

The UK is renowned worldwide for its creativity.  This innovation enriches our lives but also enriches the economy; creative industries are contributing almost 10 million pounds an hour to the UK economy, according to a recent press release from the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), and they're growing -  by 8.9% in 2014 You can read more here.

The last couple of years saw the Crafts Council succssfully lobby for the inclusion of craft within the DCMS creative industries definition used to produce their economic estimates.  You can read more in the report; "Measuring the Craft Economy" found here.  The same report concludes that craft industries and occupations generated nearly £3.4bn for the UK economy.

The Crafts Council have published other reports too, dating back to 2010.  Some of the research relates to the craft economy, others to innovation, technology and education. The Crafts Council are persistant advocates for craft and run programmes such as 'Firing Up', which saw dormant ceramic kilns in UK schools fired up and teachers inspired to teach ceramics again.  You can see a short film about the programme here...

Photo: Sophie Mutevelian.

We need to ensure we have a future generation of 'creatives' to build on the current growth of this industry through an excellent and broad education in schools.  Richard M Wilson has created a petition lobbying for the inclusion of 'expressive arts' in the English Baccalaureate.  "Creativity must be at the heart of our schools."  If you feel passionately about the subject, you can find more information and sign the petition here...

Place Making

PLACEMAKING

"As both an overarching idea and a hands-on approach for improving a neighborhood, city, or region, Placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community."  by Project for Public Spaces:

Back in 2012, I was given the opportunity to explore what placemaking means to me, and to test the potential benefit that a Maker can bring to the process.  We spent two days at the fascinating Chatham Dockyard working with other makers, architects and students on a capsule project initiated by the Crafts Council.  Our brief was very open, and working in teams of three; one maker, one architect and one student, we explored;

• How can the specialist understanding of materials and skills influence the built environment?
• What does the meaning of preciousness or consideration of scale have on making a place special?
• What impact can creative input have on local distinctiveness within place?
• What kinds of places and communities can emerge from these collaborations?

  

We found ourselves looking for and identifying things that made Chatham 'distinctive', which wasn't hard in such a rich historical industrial site. The plethera of industrial relics appealed to my inner gadget- making child and I had to supress urges to start making some sort of motorised floating den... 

 

What also fascinates me about industrial architecture is the relationship between the building's form and its function; each window and roof facet fulfiling a specific role for the activity happening in and around it. The incidental beauty of the building's form and facade is meaninfully purposeful. 

 

To read more about the project and to watch a short film of the two days, you can visit:

http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/articles/place-making/

Crafts Council Hothouse 5 - final workshop!

I spent yesterday with 'Hothouse 5', a group of emerging Makers who've been working over the last 6 months with the Crafts Council to establish an excellent grounding in both the creative and business aspects of making a living from their Craft.   On this, their last day of training, it was really clear what a significant change the programme had made, predominantly in confidence, and in the ability to articulate really clearly what they're trying to achieve over the next three years of launching their career.

 The group each presented their creative business for 10 minutes, followed by peer feedback from the group, alongside Katia Stewart, talent development manager at the Crafts Council, myself, and Karin Jordan, who runs postgraduate entrepreneurship courses at our venue, Plymouth College of Art.

I left Plymouth feeling energised, despite my early drive over from Bristol in the morning!

MAKE: SHIFT Crafts Council conference

I spent two days last week immersed in craft innovation.

I'm really interested in the idea of collaborating; with industry, museums, science....  This was a really great opportunity to hear about makers doing exactly that: 

Matt Duran's collaboration with medical research at the Royal Free hospital in London, to create glass moulds for growing a polymer in, which provides the scaffolding for new noses. More here


Designer / Maker  Lizete Druka; project designer, Advanced Colour & Materials at Jaguar.

Sara Robertson and Sarah Taylor showed us their incredible innovative cloth that incorporates light;
made from black Holland Linen printed with a newly developed, white-scattering liquid crystal thermochromic dye, polymer optical fibres and heat sinks.  More information here

I was so inspired by Dr Sarat Babu's passion for creating new materials through new manufacturing processes.  Below are samples of architectured materials developed through selective laser sintering.  More here

Finally, I missed her talk, but am a huge fan of what Fi Scott of Make Works has achieved; an online comprehensive directory of Scottish makers, manufacturers, material suppliers and factories.   When can we have one for England!

MATERIAL LAB's Jim Biddulph writes a great blog report from the conference:
http://www.material-lab.co.uk/blog/post/makeshift-2014/