Te Rito Toi - The Twice Born Seed

My explicit interest in creativity in schools began a decade or so ago when, as a consequence of working in a technology rich school environment, I began to think about the future of schools. The conclusion I reached over time was that schools in their 19t/20th century incarnation perhaps didn't have too much of a future, given that much of what they had to offer was now accessible quite independently of school institutions. My conclusion back then was that the long term future of schools lay in focussing on those things that make us human, because other 'stuff' that we thought important could and quite possibly would be replaced by technology. In that mix I placed (amongst other things) the ability to empathise and to relate to others, and the ability to be creative. At that time I could see no way in which technology could replace those attributes.

At this stage I still don't see technology doing so, hence my ongoing interest in creativity in schools. Along the way I then found the famous Sir Ken Robinson TeD talk 'Do schools kill creativity?'.  I was fortunate enough to hear Sir Ken speak in person at a couple of conferences before his unfortunate passing in 2020.

Fast forward to 2016 when I was privileged to take up the positon as Principal of Hornby High School Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka. Some of my early work in our kura lay in leading Board and staff to a new vision for the school: 'A centre of creative excellence he puna auaha'. Amongst many other work streams since then we have been engaged in an ongoing conversation about what that creativity looks like in our daily work, because we did NOT mean the vision to be restricted to the traditional creative arts, although we have always seen those as an essential part of what we seek to be.

In 2020 I stumbled upon a paper that has had significant impact on my thinking. Titled 'Replanting creativity in post-normal times Te rito toi', the paper was authored by a team lead by professor Peter O'Connor of Auckland University's Centre for Arts and Social Transformation.

Even the existence of this group came as a pleasant surprise to me - it effected the reassuring notion that we were not alone at Hornby High School.

As if the universe was directing me towards this with intent, over the summer break I read the new Vincent IOSullivan biography of Ralph Hotere in which I learned for the first time of the work of Beeby, Tovey, et al,  that place arts advisors (Hotere included) in schools across the country in a move that created a richness of creative experience for tamariki.

This quote from the paper in particular resonated more than most:

Nussbaum (2010) recognises that the increasingly precarious place of the arts in education in Western schooling poses a direct threat to democracy. She contends:

the insatiable drive for increased profit is at the expense of every other indicator of human value and worth; creating people who are less than fully human:If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements. The future of the world’s democracies hangs in the balance. (p. 2).

The paper also built the case for the positive impact of creativity and the arts on wellbeing, on economic productivity, and on our ability to think our way out of global problems the like of which we have never seen before. As it suggests, when we think about the 2020 Covid lockdown, what was it that so many of us turned to, to get ourselves through that time? The creative arts, and the creative people, in our society. 

This week I attended a public panel discussion in Wellington in which Professor O'Connor and a panel of four were joined by what I think may have been several hundred others interested in education, where the place of creativity and the arts in education in Aotearoa was discussed. yes it was an echo chamber, we all felt the same, but yes also it gave strength to the wairua that I feel towards this work. It was a good investment of time. 

From the 'long blog posts never get read' school of thinking, I'll discuss some of the issues as I see in successive shorter posts