The first of the three is Steve Davies, Director of the Education Directorate in the Welsh Government who will speak on Creativity in the Curriculum for Wales – outlining the way in which the Arts Council for Wales’s Creative Learning through the Arts programme is contributing to and helping schools prepare for the new national curriculum, to be launched later this month.
The second speaker is Bill Lucas, Professor of Learning and Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning (CRL) at the University of Winchester. He is the developer of the 5 Creative Habits of Mind - the signature pedagogy that underpins the Creative learning through the arts programme. His talk is titled: “What is creativity and what does it look like in an educational context”.
The third key speaker is Carlos González-Sancho of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, who will be talking about “Measuring progression in creativity” and Wales’s contribution to the international OECD programme, a plan that involves more than 17,000 students, 650 teachers and 330 schools in 11 countries.
Commenting today, Sian James, Programme Manager for Creative learning through the arts, Arts Council of Wales said:
“The Arts Council of Wales is delighted to welcome three highly respected speakers to this seminar.
“As we have seen already this week, this creative learning programme is about more than improving access to the arts in schools. It is about harnessing the arts, and using creative techniques to transform teaching and learning across the whole curriculum, and improve attainment in literacy and numeracy.
“Over 100,000 Welsh pupils have now benefitted and we’re seeing that by nurturing and developing the creativity of our learners, they’re taking steps towards achieving their academic potential and becoming well-rounded individuals. We’re closing the performance gap between pupils and this is testament to the fantastic achievements of all the teachers, creative professionals and learners who have taken part.”
The National Creative Learning Festival takes place between 2nd and 6th April in Y Senedd, Portland House and the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. Teachers, artists and learners from across the whole of Wales, from Ysgol Pendalar, Caernarfon to Mount Stuart Primary in Cardiff have come together to demonstrate the difference bringing arts and creativity into the classroom can make and to give visitors an opportunity to hear first-hand about the importance of working together.