Creatives in Education
I’ve been lucky enough over the last few weeks and months to be working with all the schools of Cornwall in different ways, with the teachers and the pupils. I feel very privileged that this has happened and to have been able to show them a series of creative tools, that can perhaps ease the way they give lessons and get the students excited.
Over the last few years I began to wonder, what is design for? And why are we here? Then, more recently, because my company specialises in environment, sustainability and social issues, I've been wondering, what is education for? What’s it to enable?
We have the idea that it's to create successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens. But actually what I am seeing through the UK Design Challenge is the schools are more interested, at Secondary level at least, in Ofsted points and ranking – getting those points and looking good and their new builds and things like that. I wonder, and I could be completely wrong, are we forgetting about the children and their roles? A paper by Green World on place-based education in the global age, says public education has become the business of training children and youth to enter the market place as consumers and workers. But where is the individualism in that? Where is the passion and the excitement?
I wasn’t trained in design, I just got lucky and have taken the right step every time and been picked by the right people. Design to me is just a tool for the lifestyle I wish to lead, which is to be able to surf and to live in Cornwall and to have time with my children. So my question is, what is the role of creativity within future learning and how we relate to schools?
So that’s what I ask of you: what is our role as creatives, if we are creatives, in the future?
I think there’s a huge opportunity for change and creative agents. I know there are already creative agents out there, but I mean constructive use of creativity, mixed with educational tools. Today all Design Challenge briefs from 34 schools across Cornwall are coming in, and the energy that is coming from these teachers is so great. They're so enthused to be part of such a simple creative process that is so inspiring. So that’s what I ask of you: what is our role as creatives, if we are creatives, in the future?
Nabeel Hamdi said, and I fully agree, that we all think too much. But children don’t, the world is just an open oyster of just pure brilliance to them. I have 3 and 4 year-old daughters and every day I’m astonished by the things they come out with. Because of education they’re gonna start doubting whether Father Christmas does exist? Do fairies exist? Why is a door there? I don’t want all that to stop. How can we use creativity to keep the ideas coming from children?
Matt’s been designing since 93, for the likes of the National Trust, Good Energy, Save the Children and the Eden Project. He’s been breaking the mould for almost as long: he set up the multi-award-winning Leap – design for change in 2004, merging his passions for creativity and the environment allowing clients accessible, affordable, social solutions and engagement. Mainly, he’s changed the way people think about design and, more broadly, how they work from mass product supply chains in India to 2 bed B&B’s in quaint Cornish fishing villages. Sounds like a big thing, IS a big thing; Matt opened the door and let sustainability in; no one will be shutting it any time soon.
