A creativity school, what for?

The need to preserve and nurture children’s natural curiosity, imagination and creativity is high on the agendas of education innovation. Education “Gurus” talk about it (like Ken Robinson in his latest book “Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education”), new schools talk about it, even national education reforms put it as a top priority (like recently the Catalan education agency, we will soon talk about it).

But, how exactly to you achieve that in learning environments that are often not really prepared for this, and at the same time obsessed with driving children’s left brain capabilities (STEM)?

Based on our experience in innovation projects at Innova with companies and non-profit organisations, we want to contribute to this challenge by providing concrete methodologies and initiatives to stimulate children’s curiosity, spark their imagination and free their creation potential.

Our first step has been to adapt the methodologies we use with our clients and that work well with children, too. This is the case of “design thinking”, a creative problem solving methodology, that can be applied to many challenges surrounding our children, from improving the school’s courtyard to making a contribution to a safer or more connected neighbourhood. This way, every child can become an inventor or “maker”.

Our second intuition was that we could leverage children’s attraction to technological gadgets like smartphones and tablets by teaching them how to make them tools for artistic creation, such as 3D-printing objects designed by themselves or making comics.

But this is only a beginning – as innovators, we want to keep exploring and learn what can be done concretely to transform a very desirable educational goal into reality. This blog is a window to share thinking and experiences about this goal with the community.