Naturally curious
April 2008
Kim Thomas
In a curriculum based on facts and box-ticking, creativity is often overlooked. "The government emphasis on data, evidence, results and league tables is not to do with the quality of learning," says Penny Hay, Director of Research at 5x5x5. "The performance-led agenda is closing down possibilities for children rather than opening them up."
5x5x5=creativity was founded with the aim of bringing creativity back into the classroom. The name derives from the pilot project in which the organisation, in partnership with the Bath Area Network for Artists and the Arts Development Team in Bath, worked with five schools, five visual artists and five galleries to engage young people in philosophical enquiries about contemporary art.
The organisation's philosophy is derived from practice in pre-schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, which, following the educational ideas of Loris Malaguzzi, promotes children's creativity and independence of thought. The Reggio Emilia pre-schools employ an artist as a full-time member of staff alongside the teachers, and there is no hierarchy: teachers, parents, artists and children are all regarded as protagonists in the learning process.
In the early days, 5x5x5 too worked exclusively with children aged between 3 and 5. "We wanted to show that young children are capable of deep conceptual thinking, and if we can show the depth of this thinking in the early years, then it is possible to develop their life-wide, lifelong creative capacities," says Penny.
In the past three years, however, the organisation has expanded its work to undertake projects with both primary and secondary school children. Typically an artist will stay in a school or other educational setting for an academic year, working for a minimum of 20 half-days with the children, and spending another five days of professional development with the teachers. Often the artists stay for longer than a year, but sometimes they move on: 5x5x5 has a core group of artists it has worked with for many years, and is now creating a pool of artists who can be called on as appropriate, according to their different skills and specialisms.
The 5x5x5 approach turns conventional teaching on its head: instead of using a 'deficit' model, in which children are filled with facts, the artists always start from the children’s own experience: "Young children will very readily tell you the questions they want to explore, so their learning is very responsive to their experiences of the world. We don’t have a predefined curriculum – we’re working with children’s ideas as a starting point. Loris Malaguzzi said the things we need to know about children come from children."
At Freshford Primary School, for example, the outside wall became a museum where children could share their 'treasures': objects the children had found and picked up, such as pine cones, sticks or shells. Each object was photographed and discussed, with children sharing memories attached to the object, or transforming the objects in their imagination, with sticks turned into magic wands or picture frames.
The strapline for 5x5x5 is: "We are researching children researching the world". Research is a fundamental part of the organisation's approach, which starts with the children's initial observations, follows with an exploration of those observations, carries on through conducting experiments with the children, and then goes on to record the children's learning journeys, which feed into future enquiries. Penny explains how it works: "The research is punctuated with regular review meetings, so we keep a conversation going throughout the research about progress. We're modelling, as a group of adults, what we're doing with the children – we're responding to a creative, reflective cycle, so we can see what's working and what's not, what the emerging themes are, and what the areas of enquiry are that we need to support."
For the children, it's a stimulating and fresh approach: "It's about changing the culture of learning, and giving responsibility back to the learners. It's not a top-down model; it's a generative process where ideas and thinking take precedence over content and knowledge."
The process can, however, be a challenging one for teachers more used to teaching with the aim of getting children through tests: "SATs are very summative; they're only testing a particular thing, and there are a lot of teachers who are teaching for the test, not really giving attention to what the children want to find out, and what they already know." Taking the 5x5x5 approach means that teachers have to 'unlearn' much of what they learnt in teacher training, which has been based on a 'content-led curriculum'.
But in the right environment, teachers find their practice is invigorated by working with 5x5x5: "The schools that have been most successful are the ones where they’'e transformed their learning culture, and they've re-conceptualised their whole approach to learning, so the children are put at the centre with the adult taking responsibility alongside them. In the end it is to do with the relationships between the adults, especially where there's a supportive senior management team. I think a lot of teachers have been asking for permission to take more risk."
Just as teachers enjoy the opportunity to develop their own creativity, many of the 5x5x5 artists find that the experience of working with children can inform their own creative work, says Penny. The process is one in which the adults - teachers and artists - are involved in constructing meaning alongside the children, so all three groups have the opportunity for deepening their learning through self-reflection.
With a growing number of schools keen to work with 5x5x5, the future for the organisation looks strong. Although it now has a pool of expertise in the form of artists who have experience in working with children, Penny would like to expand the kinds of creative professionals 5x5x5 works with: "We’d love to work with astronauts, mathematicians and philosophers, but we haven't got there yet. Our view of creativity is democratic – everybody is creative, from the moment of birth. It would be good to see how that was lived out working with different creative professionals."
Creativity is not something to be sidelined in the curriculum as a separate subject, she adds: "Creativity is a way of being. Peter Moss [of the Institute of Edcuation] says it is a habit of mind and a disposition. It is life-wide – a part of being human."