Creative Practitioners

Recruiting and deploying creative practitioners Area Delivery Organisations (ADOs) recruit and
deploy creative practitioners in a variety of ways. Creative Practitioners are invited to attend an introductory session in our offices in November if they are going to be working in a Creative Partnership school.

It is the responsibility of the Creative Agent working with your school to ensure that suitable partnerships are established that will lead to the development of innovative, exciting and appropriately constructed project activity.

It is the school’s responsibility, with the guidance and support of their Creative Agent, to take care of the contracting and deployment arrangements for creative practitioners. It is important for the school to develop its capacity to identify the right sort of creative practitioners to match their needs and then to manage the practitioners’ involvement. Learning to do this well will help the school sustain creative learning when it eventually leaves the Creative Partnerships programme.

Best Practice Principles

• Creative practitioners should be recruited initially through a selection process organised by the Creative Agent and the ADO that assesses their knowledge, skills and experience of working in creative learning settings
• The track record of creative practitioners should demonstrate excellence in both creative practice and facilitating creative learning activity
• Creative practitioners should be involved in project planning and development at the earliest possible opportunity, and before the submission of project plans to the ADO
• Wherever possible, creative practitioners should be involved with schools on a long-term basis to develop working relationships with school staff that are characterised by trust and openness. Developing a creative learning community in the school based on collaborative and reflective practice is the key to embedding sustainable change
• Project plans should include an appropriate allocation of time to enable in-depth planning between young people, teachers and creative practitioners. This should be reflected in budget planning
• Teachers and other school staff should always work alongside creative practitioners in the classroom, in ways that allow both skill sets to complement each other
• The strength of the collaborative partnership lies in each partner’s understanding of the distinctiveness and complementarity of their skill sets. Creative practitioners should maintain the mindset of an external partner, while the teacher makes full use of their expertise and knowledge of pupils’ needs and abilities

Creative practitioner competencies and qualities

Creative Partnerships has developed a competency framework for creative practitioners. It is used as the basis for professional development activities and includes the following competencies and qualities:
• understanding Creative Partnerships
• developing and managing effective relationships with schools
• understanding the relationship between the creative practitioner’s own practice and the creativity of others
• developing as a creative practitioner and working with other practitioners
• encouraging and developing reflective practice
• project planning
• delivering face-to-face activities
• respecting children and young people as co-constructors of learning
• developing the school as a supportive context for creative learning
• developing collaborative pedagogy
• evaluation
• understanding the social, educational and cultural contexts in which Creative Partnerships operates
• understanding creative learning in the context of contemporary educational theory
• delivering long-term creative learning programmes
• celebrating achievement
• effective advocacy
Creative practitioners working with Creative Partnerships will naturally demonstrate varying levels of professional competence in relation to the above areas. Schools play an important role in assisting practitioner learning as an ongoing feature of the collaborative relationship.

Creative practitioners’ experience in the creative sector Creative practitioners need to be able to share their personal creative journeys with young people and demonstrate pathways into careers in the creative sector. They should be able to relate to young people in ways that are different
from the teacher/pupil relationship. This difference is hard to define, but is usually characterised by a greater degree of informality, openness and negotiated practice than might ordinarily be observed in relationships between teachers and pupils. Modelling risk taking as a positive opportunity and helping teachers move out of their comfort zone into less familiar territory is equally important. Careful planning, while maintaining the capacity for spontaneity, will create
the conditions where risk is embraced and ‘disciplined innovation’ can thrive.

Possible need for support

Creative practitioners may need support with:
• understanding the learning and knowledge capacities of different age groups
• working within the limitations of school time structures
• understanding the complex demands placed upon teachers working within an ‘assessment culture’
• understanding curriculum issues and the need to plan imaginatively to address these