I have worked as a community arts worker and trainer for over 20 years (is that the time already!) ; that means I work with groups of people all the time and help them to creative something individually or collectively. I worked freelance for Play-Train for many years, devising and delivering training courses in how to encourage play and creativity in young children. I trained to be a specialist Children’s Consultation facilitator on one of the first programmes of its kind.
So what can I help you with?
Here are some thoughts to guide you.
- Are you a head teacher that needs their staff to feel more creatively confident and inspired? Or are you sick of boring and impractical inset training days? Would you like to see more creative planning from your staff team?
- Are you an arts co-ordinator that needs to inject something new into the school – something that will pull people together?
- Are you a teacher wishing your class was a little more confident and could think for themselves, but they don’t seem to have the confidence, no matter how much you encourage them? Would you like to spread creativity across the curriculum but aren’t sure how?
- Are you a group of home schoolers planning an event or needing creative ideas?
- Have you got a school or community group with an event coming up, an arts week or carnival and would like some help with creative activities?
- Are you responsible for training temporary staff for summer play activities? Do the team need ideas? Are they more ‘sporty’ than ‘arty’ and you want to make sure all abilities are catered for?
- Are you an arts development officer, responsible for events in the holidays and wanting some fun arts activities for all ages?
Here is a bit more about me….
I love running creative workshops and have recently trained with Mathilda Joubert (www.softnotes.com) who is a Government advisor and creativity expert; she trains people in creative thinking techniques that are great for planning and problem solving. I now have a way to share the creative process with people and help them to come up with new ideas and solutions. I have used these techniques with Primary schools wanting to have a more creative approach to learning and they have proven very effective.
I have done lots of work in primary schools helping teachers to approach learning more creatively. I help them to plan something exciting, something that will get the children enthused. Many young children learn better when they are making, doing and exploring. Children create their own problems to solve and this means greater engagement in learning; they often learn without realising they are in a lesson!
Working with me helps teachers to feel more confident about letting the children express their own thoughts and ideas. They don’t often get a chance to ‘let go’ and let the children make decisions; they often fear that chaos will ensue, but it never does. I have had years of experience of managing the creative process, so I can hold their hand while they try something new
Every training and project is different, so feel free to talk to me about your training needs or about any creative projects you have in mind; to help you with ideas I have lots of suggestions of projects (I will put link here when they are up) and some archives of ones I have completed. I bring enthusiasm, experience, new ideas, new materials, support, help with planning and lots of fun.
Happy browsing
Jane
Hi,
we are just finishing our Creative Partnership project and our focus for 2011-2012 is to contunue with teacher creativity and pupil creativity. Our school is committed to teaching knowledge, skills and understanding through creative topics and projects rather than just facts and information.
If you can offer any thoughts, suggestions ideas etc, I would be most willing to discuss further.
Thanks
Adrian Pembleton
Hello Adrian. If you have done the full 3 years of CP then you all will have been on quite an amazing journey already, so the desire is to keep that momentum going? Keeping the teachers feeling enthusiastic and motivated will be a huge key; regular input of creative, practical sessions as well as planning sessions will help them to inspire each other. I think it is important for teachers to have their own creativity nurtured and have a chance to make things and experiment in a supportive atmosphere, as you know, some will be more creatively confident than others. The other thing to think about is how you are coming up with topics and projects; some will be dictated from above, but there is a lot of scope for the children to choose topics they would like to work on. I find doing some creative work with a class can reveal areas of interest that you would not be aware of if you just had a discussion with them and said ‘what are you interested in?’ Sometimes we leave the ‘doing’ until the project has begun, but having a time of making and doing with no prescribed outcome gives the pupils time to think and explore, often giving great insight into things that fascinate them. Have you noticed this yourself?
Hello Jane,
I am an adult who missed out on play as a child, and consequently have had great difficulties during my life. I have been frightened to travel to anywhere unfamiliar, as I had a ‘rubbish’ sense of direction. Almost, I could say i had no sense of direction whatsoever. Small ev eryday tasks were difficult and problematic to me, and I have kept this secret for a very long time. I am a pensioner now, and have been for a very long time!!
However, I am addressing all this and have found and developed strategies for redressing these problems, with which I have had great success, and I feel a more rounded person and I also feel much happier.
I would be really glad of advice – cos i can see that you are someone who could help ME. I am certainly not a child but I can still learn and WANT TO . I have a book here called ‘How to be a Genius’ and the writer stresses the importance of making things. I didn’t do this sort of thing as a kid if i could avoid it as I had astigmatism which was not corrected and couldn’t cut anything in a straight line. My constant plea was ‘Can you help me?’ I think inside I have felt that as a Mantra to my life. I felt useless…..
Perhaps my coming out on your website will encourage all providers of this sort of education to encourage and spend perhaps a little more time working out how they can help kids who may have a degree of my problem. Instead of avoiding this sort of play I patently should have been doing more of it!
Goodness, Wendy, thank you so much for your honesty in sharing that incredible story.
We are so pumped full of ‘they’re ONLY playing’ type messages that we can dismiss the fact that play is an essential part of human development; in fact the more complex humans have become the longer we spend in the playful stage of development (and some would argue that we should be in this stage for LIFE – look up ‘neoteny‘)
Working in 100′s of schools I have seen clearly that the children who experience making on a regular basis are far more confident than those that do not. By ‘making’ I mean any chance to get their hands on even the simplest of materials and make out of them whatever their imagination desires. I have met classes where 9 year olds cannot use scissors and will ask me to cut things out for them; this surely must have a knock on effect to confidence and self trust in other areas of life.
I find that adults who come on my training days get a huge amount out of it and look as though they have had therapy by the end of it. Their faces are lit up and they look different, they have let go and relaxed and had fun and ‘messed about’ and it does them the world of good. I love seeing the change. I have often wondered about doing play days for adults, but have never been sure how to market it. It’s something I am seriously considering and your message makes me think it might be needed after all.
I am not sure what advice I can give you as it seems you are doing a great job of facing the issues you have and doing something about them. There are loads of wonderful children’s books with simple ideas for making things and I still refer to many of them now – much less threatening than adult craft books! Some of them are a bit too prescriptive, but they will still give you ideas for simple arts ideas you could play with. Pretend you are 4 again and get the paint pots out! I love the ‘Anti-Colouring Book’ it has images that are only part done and asks you to fill in the rest, for instance there is a drawing of a boy lying asleep with a big dream bubble over his head and you have to fill in what he is dreaming. And don’t be afraid to destroy things, children often don’t keep what they make because only the ‘doing’ of it mattered and not the outcome.
‘Play’ by Stewart Brown is also a lovely book about the need for adults to play.
Best wishes with your healing journey.
Thank you so much Jane. I will have a look for the Stewart Brown book. I am so enthused by what I have been doing and can see how it is impacting on my life, AND I AM EAGER TO DO MORE. Thank you again. My daughter suggested semi-seriously that I plan the next trip away we have – so I am going to get the maps out and try to make sense of them. THIS IS SLIGHTLY EMBARASSING but what the hell. we all have problem areas and help is around if we stop covering up.