About Creative Partnerships

Creative Partnerships starts from the belief that teaching is fundamentally a creative profession and that teachers are well accustomed to finding creative solutions to complex challenges. By pairing the complementary skills of creative practitioners and teachers, Creative Partnerships helps to liberate the creativity of everyone involved, so that fresh and engaging approaches to teaching and learning are developed through collaborative processes.

We foster innovative, long-term partnerships between schools and creative professionals, including architects, scientists, multimedia developers and artists. These partnerships inspire young people, teachers and creative professionals to challenge how they work and experiment with new ideas. They help bring the curriculum to life, providing new ways for students to engage with subjects and to develop increased motivation for learning.

Creative Partnerships’ approach is distinctive because

- it starts with the school improvement plan linking programme development closely with priorities identified by the school
- it makes time for proper in-depth planning to insure programmes are relevant and based on the needs of the school and its pupils
- it facilitates processes where young people, teachers and practitioners can work together as co-constructors of learning
- it brokers and supports long-term relationships between young people, teachers and creative practitioners
- it supports in-depth evaluation and reflection, leading to sustainable and embedded practice

What this approach looks like in schools in the form of projects varies greatly, as the programmes and the projects within them are designed to be individual responses to the needs of each school. The key defining characteristics of project activity if the collaborative partnership between creative professionals, classroom staff and young people and the ways in which this partnership helps to bring the curriculum to life, providing new ways for learners to engage with subjects and to develop increased motivation for learning. Creative Partnerships projects allow time for in-depth planning, co-delivery and reflection.