How the Enquiry Schools programme works
Students visit Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The Enquiry Schools programme works with schools over a period of one year, to explore how creative teaching and learning can enhance their practice. Enquiry Schools decide on a specific focus for their programme in relation to the broader needs of the school.
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.
The Creative Partnerships approach is distinctive:
- 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 ensure 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 characteristic of project activity is 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. More importantly, they are more active and more fun than standard curriculum activities and, at the core of the process, they give pupils greater involvement in decision making.
Successful projects involve a broad range of creative professionals from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines including: scientists, architects, designers, engineers, marketing experts, cooks, gardeners and artists. This mix of professionals means that projects can be designed to appeal to a broad range of interests and learning styles.
