Are you a school leader who is keen to be supported in experimenting with innovative, creative ways to bring the new curriculum to life in authentic, engaging ways for your learners?
Are you ready to take your leadership skills to the next level within your school?
Do you wish you had the time to try different ways of teaching and learning in your setting to assess what engages your learners?
Are you overwhelmed by the amount of change in the education system in Wales at the moment?
Could you do with a critical friend to help you make sense of it all?
The Arts Council of Wales in partnership with Welsh Government are delighted to be able to relaunch an exciting opportunity created for middle/senior school leaders, endorsed by the National Academy for Educational Leadership to support school leaders to develop creative leadership within their own school settings.
The aim of the programme is to encourage confidence in new ways of working, innovation, reflection, and resilience whilst also developing the understanding of the role of creativity in the context of the Curriculum for Wales, the four purposes and the professional standards for teaching and leadership. Within the programme, participants are encouraged to reflect honestly about their professional practice and contexts and identify the barriers that may impede their capacity to become creative leaders. The programme is tailored to each participant’s current stage of progression within their professional leadership career.
What the offer will entail:
The programme begins with a two-day training delivered by the Creative Leadership team within the Arts Council of Wales. Each participant is then matched with a Creative Agent, based on the school leader’s needs, locality, and language of school, forming an ongoing working partnership over the course of 18-20 weeks.
The Creative Agent acts as both creative leadership coach and critical friend; reinforcing the principles of creative leadership, engaging in ongoing, supportive, and reflective dialogue. There are also two networking opportunities to share progress and provide peer support. A final collaborative sharing session disseminates the personal explorations amongst all involved forming a potential ongoing network. It is an essential requirement that you commit to spending 3 days’ worth of time with your Creative Agent during the enquiry. Don’t worry, this can be arranged to be flexible to fit around your commitments.
Funding and support:
Each school leader will receive supply cover costs to attend the training, networking meetings and sharing event. It is an essential requirement of the programme that you attend both training days, the networking events and the sharing event. Each participant will receive Creative Agent coaching support for the duration of 18-20 weeks. There is no direct grant fund allocated to schools.
Eligibility:
This provision is predominantly for those in or aspiring to middle or senior leadership roles, though we encourage the awareness of leadership in every role. It is for leaders of learning in all Areas of Learning Experience and not just the Expressive Arts. You must be a state maintained early years or school setting in Wales too be eligible.
We would particularly welcome expressions of interest from applicants from culturally and ethnically diverse backgrounds.
Timeline:
Deadline for expression of interest: 12 noon 7th November 2024
Training for middle/senior leaders: 11th & 12th February 2025
Networking events (online): 19th March & 15th May 2025
Sharing event: 18th June 2025
If you have any questions, please contact one of the Creative Learning Team as detailed below:
lora.winfield-young@arts.wales
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Information briefing
Please find below a recording of our information briefing:
No, not at all. You might be a Head of Year, an AoLE Lead, a Curriculum Lead, a Pastoral Lead or ALNCo. If you have whole school responsibility for any aspect of teaching and learning, we’d love to hear from you. Equally, you could be a class teacher who is particularly interested in exploring creative learning and taking a lead for this within your own setting.
Absolutely not. Creativity is an essential skill for life aligned with the 4 Core Purposes and cuts across all AoLEs. Creative learning pedagogy is relevant and useful in devising innovative, authentic and engaging experiences for all learners.
Yes, you do. It is a condition of your participation. This is to ensure you get the most out of your experience and benefit from the NAEL endorsed and Welsh Government/Arts Council of Wales funded professional learning opportunities. You should only apply if you are sure you will be fully available for all the various commitments.
In supporting their leaders, we have observed that Creative Agents support can often be characterised as coaching. Our definition of leadership coaching is: Partnering in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires a person to maximise their personal and professional potential (International Coaching Federation). The benefits of leading coaching include:
1. Empowerment through supportive and reflective conversations towards achieving goals;
2. New Insight through questioning;
3. Free Thinking through generating greater flexibility in thinking by questioning that prompts the leader to see other perspectives;
4. Enhanced Performance in both attitude and ability through getting the most out of own and others' talents;
5. Improved Communication by developing clarity in messaging. (Insala, 2019)
Yes, you do. Working with your contracted creative agent is not optional and working in partnership is a condition of participation. We know schools, and leaders are very busy places and the programme is designed to be adaptable to fit around your work commitments However, we have observed that sometimes leaders really struggle with finding availability to meet their creative agents. Where problems like that arise this can result in failing to complete the programme - we want to avoid that. Please carefully consider your commitment to this fundamental element before applying.
No, it’s totally up to you and your Creative Agent how you choose to plan the time allocation together. This could consist of some in person meeting and some online; a mixture of differing lengths of time (for example, a half day planning session followed by hourly weekly catch ups).
No, the Creative Agent is there as a coach to you personally throughout the programme. This is all about you. Valuable time for you to pause and reflect on your own practice and leadership. Understanding, of course, that anything you discover through experimentation will ultimately benefit the learners too. This is not about bringing Creative Agents in to work with learners.
Yes, we do. We fund the costs of supply cover for you to attend the training, networking and sharing sessions. We also fund the provision of your Creative Agent. It is a condition of participation that you do fully utilise the 3 days’ worth of time with your Creative Agent though how you break up that time is agreed on an individual basis.
That is up to you and your Creative Agent to decide. The programme runs for between 18 -20 weeks and is designed to fit around term dates and your responsibilities within school. We are flexible as we understand life in schools and just how busy you are.
No. Each school leader and Creative Agent decide on what creative learning and creative leadership goal you have and areas of interest to explore and develop. This is then addressed as an enquiry question.
Absolutely. You will be assigned a Project Lead from within the Creative learning team at the Arts Council of Wales as well as your own Creative Agent. All our Creative Agents on the Creative leadership programme are highly experienced and skilled creative practitioners. In addition, we will be drawing upon alumni from the programme to share their experiences with you as well as bringing the current cohort together regularly for networking and sharing.
What we say to our creative agents about their own professional learning and development whilst working on this programme: The role of the Creative Agent in the Creative Leadership Programme borrows from but is distinctly different to the traditional CA role on a Lead Creative Schools enquiry. The benefits of taking on this role are multi layered but are likely to include some, if not all of the following: significant new insights and experience into your own professional practice, professional value and capabilities; new perspectives on your unique approaches and strengths to support and nurture creativity in others; opportunities for informal peer to peer support; training and support from Arts Council of Wales Creative Leadership Team; a great sense of vicarious achievement and satisfaction as you observe your leaders development.