Sparking creativity, fanning the blaze

Some sparks flicker into the night sky, float for a while, and are then snuffed out. Some sparks settle and sit for a while before being fanned in to life by the wind, itself sometimes a gentle breeze, other times a gale. I think creativity can be much like that. To extend the simile, it begs the questions: what are the sparks, and how do we create the wind that fans those sparks into life?

I was thinking about our own life in retirement, Lorraine and I. While it has at times felt empty, less than purposeful, at times even pointless, it has also been dotted with acts of creativity. 

Last winter the frost had frozen the moisture inside this terracotta pot, and broken a piece off the rim. Throw it out? No .. try this 're-imagining'.

Lorraine has always been a 'crafter', specifically a knitter and a crochet'er (is that a word?). She spends some time almost every day doing one or the other, creating garments for premature babies, or blankets and toys for cats at the SPCA .. daily acts of creativity.

Nearly five years ago I found myself writing poetry. Why? No idea... my experiences of poetry at school weren't positive so this came as something of a surprise.  My current 'thing' is to take old nursery rhymes and re-imagine them in some way.

These are our personal 'sparks'. Then I have friends who restore vintage and classic cars, who dance, who turn bowls from scrap pieces of timber,  put new handles on old knives, and create prints and paintings and pen sketches in their spare time. Friend Andy sketches while he waits as his daughter engages in her swimming training.

Credit: Andrew Gorman 2026

Our daily lives are dotted with examples of creativity. I do however recognise that I live a life of privilege. I don't have to worry about whether some unscrupulous landlord will kick me out of my house next month. I do know that I will have food on the table tomorrow, or the day after, or the week after, and I will be able to heat the house next cold snap we get. And I no longer have to turn up to work six or seven days a week, putting in 60 to 80 hours a week just to be abused by some angry parent who thinks their child has never done anything wrong in their lives.

That privilege allows me the time to stop, it allows my brain to be bored. Professor Peter O'Connor co-authored a great wee book titled 'Slow Wonder', a beautiful read that espouses the benefits of slowing life down. That 'slowness', that time, that boredom, is essential to creativity.

Heartily recommended....

These small examples of creativity in our lives will be dotted all through every community, but it's mostly too difficult to step back and see the coherent whole. I suspect too that because we don't see commercial benefit from these individual acts we think therefore that they have no value.

This is to miss the point that such creativity is an essential part of simply being human. It is central to our lives. There is no need for it to yield some dollar value. The urge to look for a dollar value reflects the degree to which we have lost the ability to simply 'be'. I well recall in my time on staff at Christ's College when the chaplain in sermons often urged the boys to see themselves as 'human beings', not as 'human doings'. This was his way of saying that we need to allow ourselves the time and the pleasure of sitting and being bored, of being at home with our existence.

These acts are the 'sparks' that float in the air of our communities. And like the sparks from a fire, some of these sparks of creativity will die in the rain. Others will, however, be fanned into life by the winds that blow around us.

The wind might be individual passion and self belief and the simple 'urge to create', perhaps the result of an urge as simple as curiosity. However that wind might also be the wonder and encouragement of friends and community. If we accept that creativity is central to learning, this is where a 'learning city' comes into its own. An idea attributed to Confucius, and voiced by Dan Siegel, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Richard Feynman, says that "the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name", the idea that to name something is to be able to understand and control it".

By naming our city as a 'learning city', we allow ourselves the opportunity to understand what learning is, what creativity is, and so be able to foster and grow our individual and collective creativity. That is one of the focii of 'Ako Ōtautahi-Learning City Christchurch'. It's LCC's job to encourage the sparks and send them into the air, and thento fan the flames, whether with a gentle puff of wind or a force 10 gale.

Let's acknowledge and celebrate the creativity that abounds within and between human souls. Then and only then can we gather the corresponding economic benefits as we reveal, nurture, and grow, a creative population, although that economic benefit should not be our main reason for doing so.  The whole will certainly be more than 'the sum of our parts'. We must first see creativity as a part of simply 'being', we must allow ourselves to slow down and simply 'be'. 

I think I feel another poem coming on.

Guerilla gardening in a city's cafes?

You see a lot of things when you're sitting in a cafe.You can think of lots of things as well. Cafes can be great places to sit and think. 

http://www.dinknesmith.com/2024/03/sometimes-i-sits-and-thinks-sometimes-i.html

This is hardly one of the world's great secrets, and cafes are filled with people who are doing everything from eating lunch to enjoying a solitary coffee to meeting friends to typing assignments or sales proposals on a laptop .. to sitting and thinking. The more pertinent point is that cafes are generally abuzz with people. Well, the successful ones are anyway.

I also notice that many of those successful cafes, those 'popular' cafes, are often filled with examples of creativity. Call it decor, call it interior design, call it the 'vibe', call it the deliberate and intentional display of artworks for display or sale, they can be abuzz with creativity. Cafe operators know that their own distinctive vibe is an important part of their success (as well as good food and coffee, of course). I was in a cafe yesterday and sat staring for a while at these two features.. not intentional displays of creativity, but rather just ways of creating their 'vibe'.

But this had me thinking. Back in 2024 I wrote about how we need to take 'learning' and creativity to where the people are. Re-read this too if you like. It's one way in which we could democratise learning and creativity, how we could surface it, how we could connect people in ways that support their wellbeing, that help them to thrive.

In that regard I love the idea of being slightly 'subversive', of being a little 'guerilla'. I've met some outstanding 'guerilla bureaucrats', folk who are slightly subversive in stepping outside organisational norms to better achieve organisational goals. And I love the idea of the guerilla gardener. Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch uses the concept of nurturing a permaculture to help people understand what they do. If we think about nurturing learning systems, a 'learning city' in fact, then guerilla activity may be one way to go. 

If we want to nurture learning and creativity, why not do some guerilla gardening in our city's cafes? I don't mean doing illicit things without the proprietor's approval. Wouldn't it be rather cool to seed each table in a cafe with a printed poem during World Poetry week (or any week for that matter)? Or copies of small artwork sketches? How would you feel if something like this sat randomly on the table as you sat down with your flat white or your espresso?

Or this?

What conversations could this create?  At the very least it might create curiosity..... What is this? Who put it there" Why did they put it there? What does it mean? I can hear the conversation now - seven year old to mother "Mum, what does that say?" There are some great possibilities.

Amongst the problems is the issue of access and privilege. Just as museums and art galleries are often only visited by those with privilege, so too with cafes. Your daily caffeine fix comes at a cost, and when you are struggling to pay the rent and feed the children, sitting in a cafe with a mocha or a chai is unlikely to be any part of your weekly routine. The question is, by spreading this mahi across cafes and into the minds of those that can afford it, would we potentially improve the lives of others? I am a great believer in the power of art and poetry to change thinking, to grow empathy, to broaden perspectives. Perhaps that could be the big win. Social engineering? Yup.. unashamedly so.

Take the learning, the creativity, to where the people are. Some cafes already offering up examples of creativity, because it's good for business. Let's get a little 'guerilla'. But most of all let's get more deliberate and intentional about it. Let's not wait for people to come to us. Let's generate curiosity, inspiration, creativity, and learning, in those informal everyday spaces where we find people. Let's take the curiosity and the creativity to them.

Amplify Amplify Amplify

When you take a look around, when you look hard at your own village, town, or city, there's a lot going on. In particular there's a lot going on that I would describe as creative endeavour. You'll find painters and poets and novelists and print makers and designers and photographers and inventors and cabinet makers and sculptors and wood turners and vintage car restorers and gardeners and experimental chefs and mural painters and dancers and guitarists and timpanists and .... yeah, there's a lot going on. 

However all of us can all too easily fall under that 'fug' of feeling and thinking in which we think our world is not very creative, and that we are not very creative, because unless you are a part of that scene, or unless you actively go looking, you mostly don't see it.

Often on a daily basis we pass by the material evidence of this, with murals and sculptures in public spaces, or we might occasionally see a small media piece of a writers' workshop or something similar. And this is all part of the 'creative vibe' of any place in which we live. But I wonder how often we recognise it as such?

In politics we are now seeing an extreme example of the old lesson about repetition: if you say something often enough, whether truth or lie, people come to believe that it is so. Sadly we are seeing this all too often in the repetition of lies that are intended to create division, to appeal to some very base human instincts, in order to support someone's hunger for power. It is repetition based on a complete lack of moral imperative.

I have, during the course of experience in leading two schools, found that if you simply take what already goes on, are deliberate and intentional in giving those stories their creative spin, and tell the stories as widely as possible, you can influence a culture. You can raise awareness, you can get people to go 'oh wow yes, hadn't thought of that'. You can get people thinking about creativity, about what it looks like in their daily lives, in their daily mahi. You can build a creative vibe.

What if we harnessed this behaviour in support of the growth of creative and learning cities? What if we took what is already happening in our villages, towns, and cities, and kept talking about it, all the time? What if we were far more deliberate and intentional in telling our creative stories, and our learning stories, using social media as the amplification tool of the moment? Could we influence a city in this way? Could we convince people that they live in creative and learning focussed cities?

As I was part the way through writing this, the following piece appeared in the Star News (click on the link in the photo caption).

Source: https://www.odt.co.nz/star-news/star-christchurch/mini-melbourne-christchurch-nzs-new-capital-cool

This is the creative vibe' I have been talking about, and this media piece is the sort of thing that builds the perception, and therefore the reality, of a creative city. After all, our perception is our reality, isn't it.

And why am I 'banging on' about a creative city? Because I have the opinion that a creative city is a learning city is a creative city is a learning city is a ... you get the idea. These are, I 'reckon', reinforcing concepts. The 'Manaiakalani kaupapa' with it's 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy shows us that creativity can be central to learning, and the work of Professor Peter O'Connor and so many others shows the impact on learning and wellbeing of taking a creative lens. Evidence shows for example that learning through a creative lens amplifies reading and writing for children.

There are so many opportunities. Take for example Jason Marsden, Centre Manager, at The Hub. He is delightfully passionate about connecting with the community and about being authentic. He initiated an 'artist in residence' at The Hub a few years ago, bringing creativity and creative opportunities to the local community. He's also a creative himself. Imagine what could happen if EVERY mall in the city did this. Imagine if every shopping mall hosted a' 'artist in residence'. What impact might that have?

There are a number of small entrepreneurial operators offering creative opportunities for young and old alike, whether 'Egg Academy', or Risingholme, or... far too many to name. What would happen if every mall in the city took it on itself to promote one of these operators every year, to have them operate within the 'public' spaces of the mall? Imagine the potential impact.

Perhaps the key word is 'IMAGINE'.... we don't allow ourselves to do that often enough.

The challenge is how to amplify the message, how to keep all of this wonderful creative mahi and energy, in front of as many people as possible, as often as possible. 

This perhaps is some of the most important work of Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch. AO-LCC is not a creator in the sense that it conceives and runs events etc, but rather a connector and an amplifier. The Trustees know the Gestalt that 'the whole is more than the sum of the parts'. 

Going back to my experience in principalship, one of many things I think I learned is that you can change perceptions by focussing on the positive, by focussing on the great things that happen. One of the odd things about we humans is that if our 'information space isn't filled with positive news, we will most probably fill it with the negative.  We all have that 'negative voice' in the back of our heads. We have to drown the negative out with positive ideas and thoughts. Our perception is our reality. So our challenge is, much like the principle of 'self talk', to flood the media spaces with positive stories of creativity and learning. We need to leverage off our many networks, social media and otherwise, with consistent and coherent messaging. We need to make sure that everyone from Frank and Lyn in Aranui to Hemi and Helen in Cashmere know about this. We can't afford to let a single drop of human creativity and potential go to waste.

We have to AMPLIFY AMPLIFY AMPLIFY.

Being constant and relentless: our words matter

Way way back in my late teens and early twenties I served in the Territorial Army, 1 Squadron, NZ Scottish Regiment to be precise. We drove those M113 Armoured Personal Carriers. It wasn't all marching, in fact was a lot of fun. But soldiers were always 'marched' from one place to another. When in a more formal 'camp' situation an NCO would take command of the squad to march us from one place to another, and as NCOs we learned the skill of commanding a squad. 

Source: https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22712622

You would call out commands (obviously), like "'eft 'ight 'eft 'ight 'eft 'ight eeefffft" (that's quite difficult to write down phonetically, but you get the idea). You would also call out what might be called 'coaching commands' like "heads up, swing those arms straight through front to rear" and so on. If you didn't, then the marching could become quite slovenly, and the moment you did you could see the members of the squad up the ante, pick up their game, stand tall, and it often applied regardless of how experienced the squad members were. I'd hasten to add that when 'on parade', on the parade ground, it was different. You knew you had to put in your best effort then, otherwise you'd be answering to some towering Regimental Sergeant Major who would tear you limb from limb (figuratively speaking).

I think that in anything in life we all need that little bit of coaching to remind us what to do, regardless of how experienced we are. I was reminded of this recently. In my Acting Principal role I have spoken often about creativity, about it's importance, about its impact, about the need to take risks if we are to be creative, and about the need to model risk taking and creativity with our learners if we want them to be creative too. I've tried to model one way in which that might look with staff.

As this piece of my own mahi comes to an end, I received a lovely email from a colleague, in which they said this:

"Your reminders to be creative have reignited something I’d lost too and for that I’m grateful. The creativity had gotten lost in all the other stuff but it’s back and I’ll make sure it stays."

Working in schools is tiring and demanding, messy, and chaotic at times. It's easy to forget those things that perhaps brought us to the profession. It's easy to lose sight of the 'essential us'. We can lose them in the fog of busyness and fatigue. It's easy to forget the need to feed our own selves, to feed our own sense of creativity. Without that, it's hard to see how we could or would nurture creativity amongst our learners.

Source: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/creativity-in-school-education/80737187

One feature of my attempts at leadership has been to try to be deliberate and intentional, constant and relentless, in voicing what I think is important, about how I think we can make the biggest difference. Also I always try to keep the number of different messages as small as possible. You can't do it all at once. I hasten to add that I try to ensure that my views are evidence informed, not simply 'random reckons'. There may be a little too much of that in our profession at times.  

 

Creativity and pedagogy

I've been working out at Darfield High School in mid Canterbury in term 3, standing in for the awesome Andy while he takes a well deserved sabbatical. It has meant the inevitable Newsletter columns, in which I have often espoused the case for creativity in schools. Here is this week's missive which I thought had wider relevance than just the Darfield community. 

I remember back in the ‘80’s (yes, I am that old) when I was working in the not-for-profit sector, and often had interactions with accountants. At about that time, if I remember correctly (and yes memory is indeed a dodgy thing), the Society of Accountants changed the university requirements for accountants. They required students to take at least one paper in their degrees that was NOT from the accounting area of the university curriculum. Take some art history, or some music, a language or a science or …. they said. I reckoned this was in recognition that maybe the stereotype of accountants that seemed to rule at the time had some basis in truth. Maybe. Maybe not. The point was that for accountants to do their job effectively they needed breadth in their learning and in their lives beyond just profit and loss statements and balance sheets. They needed a broader understanding of the world in which they worked, in which their business clients worked. They also needed the ability to better understand the nature of the businesses they served, and to be able to think more critically and creatively about all of those things in order to better advise and serve their clients.

I recently saw this sentiment in a meme that popped up on my Facebook feed:

“The true purpose of arts education is not necessarily to create more professional artists. (It’s) to create more complete human beings who are critical thinkers, who have curious minds, who can lead productive lives.”

I’ve heard it said that if we want better scientists, better managers, better engineers, better farmers etc then we need to ensure some exposure to the arts in school in whatever shape or form children and teens like. I’d go that step further and say that everyone benefits from the explicit inclusion of a focus on creativity. That will give us better scientists, better managers, better engineers, better farmers.

Which brings me to the education ‘P’ word: pedagogy. It’s a bit of a silly word, a piece of education jargon which just means ‘how we cause learning’. The refreshed AotearoaNZ curriculum (the refresh started several years ago) contains, for the first time that I can ever recall, an explicitly stated ‘pedagogy’: ‘Understand, Know, Do’. That is, it outlines a consistent and intentional framework for how schools and teachers will cause learning. It’s not a linear or sequential thing, and the fact that it includes the word ‘Know’ tells us that it places importance on ‘knowing stuff’ (about which many of you will breathe a sigh of relief, as do many teachers). ‘Knowing’ stuff might come from direct instruction (Hattie identifies this as still having a large effect size. That is, it’s still regarded as highly effective), or it might come from doing, which might be as simple as repetitive practice of exercises, or it could come from the act of creation. In education we do need to shift our practice to embrace a far wider range of ‘doing’ activities.

As an aside, that does leave us with the question of what we mean by ‘knowledge’. To most of us it probably means having recall from our own brains of facts, formulae, processes etc. In 2005 Jane Gilbert, researcher with NZ Council for Education Research, published a book called ‘Catching the knowledge wave’ in which she said that knowledge is now a verb, not a noun—something we do rather than something we have. That is, while we still need to have recall of facts, ideas, and processes, that’s no longer enough. She was saying that ‘knowledge’ is having that information in our brains, AND doing something with it. We want people who think creatively and critically about that ‘stuff’. You can’t think in a vacuum. You need to know stuff to be able to think about it.

What also matters is that the school’s pedagogy is made obvious for everyone (Tumuaki/Principals, teachers/kaiako, and learners/ako and whānau alike). It needs to be very visible for everyone to see, and teachers need to constantly ’unpack’ what it means and what it could look like.

In my previous principalship I lived, worked, and breathed, a slightly different pedagogy. That it was different doesn’t matter. What mattered was that we knew what it was, we knew how we did things in that kura, and we were deliberate and intentional in thinking about it, in unpacking it, in using it, to the benefit of all learners. And it worked!!!!!

My point is that this pedagogy (Understand, Know, Do) values creative thinking, and it values it across the whole curriculum, across the entire ‘lived experience’ of every learner.  That might be through an arts course, but it equally might be anywhere across the learning experiences of learners in every kura, every kura kaupapa, every ECE. This is visionary stuff. If we value creativity, if we are deliberate and intentional in making it a part of the experience of every learner, then one likely outcome is that we will indeed get even better scientists, even better managers, even better engineers, even better farmers. 

I’m all for that.

How digitisation of government services could be anti democratic

I am privileged to be a trustee on three education focussed trusts in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

I wouldn't describe myself as a 'high value' trustee, there are others on each Board that do a heap more work, add a heap more value, than I do. However I make the occasional useful contribution, I hope. The three trusts have two things in common: they are each focussed on education and learning in some way, shape, or form, and each of them is working to address the issue of the digital divide that we have in Aotearoa New Zealand, the gap that exists between that 'haves' and the 'have nots' in terms of access to the online digital world. Each trust engages in different mahi but with this same end in mind. You wouldn't be surprised then to read me say that I too think that digital equity is important. Access to the online digital world is empowering, liberating, humanising, and wealth creating. These are benefits that we ALL ought to be able to hold as a right, regardless of birth, race, culture, or geographical location.

You have most probably seen this image many times, reflecting how I too see this world.

This is all background to last week's thinking, having just read a piece in The Listener (August 24-30 2024) titled  'Citizen Drain'. The piece was about funding for Citizens' Advice Bureaus around the motu, but it was the part about digital access that really 'spun my wheels' (in a very negative way). In recent years I have been one of those confronting the increasing digitisation of government services, but from my relatively privileged position as as someone used to this environment, and someone with the resources to continue to own the technology to access those services in that way. I confess to having been sheltered to some degree from the impact of this strategy on those less privileged than me. This part in particular is of interest:

I've copied the article in its entirety at the bottom of this post (noting that there is no intention to contravene the copyright of The Listener in any way, and in fact if you don't have a subscription I heartily recommend taking one out).

I have to confess that despite my relative privilege with regards to digital access, I have experienced my own moments of frustration and disempowerment when attempting access to some of those government services.

Couple this with the latest cost cutting measures that see finding for support for digital learning in schools, and this could look something like a perfect storm. Here is a link to some thinking from Derek Wenmoth from June 2024.

In my opinion, this stacks up as an incredibly anti-democratic thing. Forcing the population to access government services digitally, and then attacking the means by which that population is able to grow the skills, and the software/hardware capability, to access those services, is surely about as disempowering as it gets (trumped .. no pun intended.. only by such things as attacks on women's' reproductive rights, or LGBTQ rights, or suggestions of 'stolen elections' ... etc).

I'd always thought it was the role of government to protect the population, to enable people to live good fulfilling lives in safety. In my book, that has to include access to the full range of government services.

This all means that the work of these three trusts, and the many others in Aotearoa New Zealand that work hard every day to support the disadvantaged, is doubly important. The fact that these are charitable trusts means that they often receive very little government funding, and currently most probably even less. The future is looking shaky not only for the trusts, but for the people whom they attempt to serve.

https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22703273

We must double down in our efforts to support digital equity for the people mof Aotearoa New Zealand.

Here is the Listener article in full.

Maybe creative schools coud lead to creative cities?

I'm currently back in 'work harness' as Acting Tumuaki at Darfield High School, covering sabbatical leave for  awesome Tumuaki Andy England. One of many things that has struck me about the kura (all positive, I hasten to add) is the clear rich arts tradition. I enjoyed their bi-ennial major production last week (Little Shop of Horrors) and as I walk around, the visual arts tradition is equally clear. Some of the work has been made by the members of the community, but equally some has been made by students.

Referring back to some of my thinking previously about creative cities, similarly you can create a 'creative vibe' in a school. In that school environment it is of course much easier - it is smaller, and there is much more direct control of the environment. It does however still take deliberate and intentional acts if it is to happen. In the school context it takes inspirational teachers too, and... it takes inspirational teachers who feel empowered to act, to do, to support, to nuture, and feed, student creativity, and to be creative themselves. It requires courageous leadership that is single minded in its focus. It takes leadership that empowers teachers and learners (you'd hope all teachers are learners, of course) to engage their creativity, to feed it, whether in the art room or the science lab, the social studies room or on the footie field.

And lots of schools like this in and around a city must surely mean that the life of the city itself is impacted. Most schools have lots of art work around, that's not unique. How about we show it off more, how about we talk about it more, how about we showcase it more, how about we celebrate it more? 

There is a problem there though.. wherever we are, wherever we live, wherever we work or play, it is easy to stop noticing these things in our environment. The secret is to open our eyes every day at the wonder that is all around, to see a new every single day those things that we have seen every other day.

We have to lift our view, open our eyes, and sit and stare for a while, we need to dare to daydream, all of us, school students included.

Sounds a little 'Pollyanna'ish' I guess, but it works.

Library entrance foyer

Library mural

A piece of outdoor art

The entrance foyer to the kura

Some outstanding Level 1 (Year 11) art work on display behind the reception desk

Maybe more creative schools in and arounbd a city could indeed lead to more creative cities. It doesn't exactly sound like rocket science, does it. I haven't been here long enough to have too much of an insight into things in this regard, and won't be here long enough - it's only a term. But .. e hika mā.. what a delightful leg in life's journey so far.