This document discusses using arts education to develop student creativity. It addresses common questions like how the arts can foster creative thinking skills and the right assessment strategies. The document also examines partnerships between schools and cultural institutions in Denmark. These partnerships aim to provide artistic challenges and novel perspectives to inspire student creativity. However, the document notes that intentional practice and reflection are needed for creative learning. Qualitative methods are also suggested to better understand the complexity of creativity in these partnerships. Overall, the document advocates giving students freedom to explore and find their own expertise through arts education.

1. How do we use the arts to develop
students’ creativity in schools?
OECD, Durham, UK 2017
Tatiana Chemi, PhD
Associate Professor in Educational Innovation
tc@learning.aau.dk
!

2. Programme
• Addressing the convenors’
questions
• A commonsense answer
• The case of art-school
partnerships in Denmark
• The Open School
• Culture Laboratory
• Voices from the field
• Questions reframed
• What happens AFTER

3. Common sense reply
How can the arts be used in school as a catalyst to develop students’
creativity?
In a variety of ways
Can they foster creative habits of mind and skills that students can then
apply to other school subjects?
They can but not necessarily must
What are the right assessment strategies and tools for creativity in the
context of arts education?
Variety (valuing the qualitative methods as ”rightful” methods)
How can we distinguish creative and technical skills in these subjects?
We can’t
What are the strengths of the arts for promoting creative thinking?
The arts are creation, they are expected to be novel and appropriate

4. The case of art-school partnerships

5. The Open School
In 2013 the Danish government adopted a comprehensive school
reform, which came into force in August 2014
It involved all the K16 public schools in Denmark
Anne Bamford (2006) invited at the Danish Ministry of Culture to
look specifically at the status of arts education in the country (Bamford
& Qvortrup 2006).
Norway, Cultural Rucksack
understanding of partnership is fairly broad, including cross-
collaborations with sports institutions or associations, clubs, after-
school cultural projects or so-called culture-schools (kulturskoler), and
entrepreneurs.

6. The Culture Laboratory
(Kulturens Laboratorium)
Cultural Region of Funen (Fyn)
Project January 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017
Gathering of empirical data April 2016 to December
2016

8. Research
Purpose: to capture all learning perspectives of all the
participants: students, teachers, artists and cultural
institutions.
Qualitative data (interviews, field observations, study
groups, document analysis, artwork analysis)
Consent of participation
Sampling and maching
Kick off

9. Research questions

10. The activities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnLPHOztB7E&feature=youtu.be

11. Where is creativity?

12. A probable definition of
creativity
creativity is ”the interaction among aptitude,
process, and environment by which an
individual or group produces a perceptible
product that is both novel and useful as
defined within a social context”
Plucker et al., 2004, p. 90, emphasis in original

15. Inspiration
• Good ideas
• Looking at others’ artworks
• Mutual inspiration
• More fun
• “you learn more”

16. The artist is cool
• Self-representation by means of narratives and artworks
• Novelty
• Challenges (words, concepts, reframing, techniques, freedom)
• Quality/mastery

17. Wow effect / arousal

18. Accessibility of art, artmaking,
artist
“[the students] have learned that one can do something
that is nice and something that others can use without
being artist, without being insanely talented for drawing or
painting, or being crazily creative. So, they’ve also learned
that one can actually produce something that others think
is exciting to look at, without being crazily artistic or
capable of it.” (male cultural agent)

19. Creativity is mostly about
For students and teachers
Problem solving
Idea generation
For artists and cultural agents
Thinking
Imagining (other possibilities)
Creative empathy
Curiosity
Enquiry
Being/acting independently

20. Creativity gap
Adult-driven
Product-oriented
Short time
Playful
Imperfection
Long time

21. The role of adults (and peers)

22. Too sharp division of roles
Teachers (pedagogy, and eventually project
management)
Artists (the making)
Cultural institutions (the frames, and eventually
project management)

23. “remember to be creative!”

24. Creative processes

25. Questions reframed 1
How can the arts be used in school as a catalyst to develop students’
creativity?
Intentions do not necessarily reach a CREATIVE LEARNING
outcome. Explicitation is necessary, practice + reflection, laboratory
Can they foster creative habits of mind and skills that students can
then apply to other school subjects?
No, unless we make the transfer explicit, take time to explain concepts,
cherish creativity in ALL subjects
What are the right assessment strategies and tools for creativity in the
context of arts education?
Qualitative methods can reveal the ”thickness” and complexity of this
field, giving voices to invisible forces behind these partnerships

26. Questions reframed 2
How can we distinguish creative and technical skills in
these subjects?
A fundamental part of artmaking (and analysing) is
craft. Crafts are not idiosyncratic to conception
What are the strengths of the arts for promoting
creative thinking?
Challenges
Critique
Non-dualistic approaches
The studio

27. the artists bring two fundamental
inputs to children’s creativity
novelty of different perspectives, which are closer to real
artistic practices and not biased by assumptions
artistic challenges. To be solved:
technically
cognitively
intuitively
emotionally
inquisitively
experientially
Freedom
to fail themselves
to find out autonomously about a given topic
to explore their own expertise.

28. AFTER
• 36 partnerships in the school-year 2017-2018 (20F, 16S)
• No documentation but teacher college students will be studying
each partnership
• No funds for documentation/evaluation