Oklahoma!

We have just returned from a really exciting trip to Oklahoma to present our thoughts about creative learning and the future of schools at the Creativity World Forum. Representatives from Thomas Tallis and 2 other London schools (Stormont House and Gallions) took part in a 3 month long collaboration with partner schools in Oklahoma that culminated in our presentation to 1500 delegates at the conference and the establishment of a Pop Up School.

The idea resulted from our investigation of the Pop Up phenomenon in London and beyond - dance, architecture, shops, galleries, all had appeared and disappeared as quickly during the summer of 2010. At Tallis, we had commissioned a Pop Up Gallery/Classroom for the school concourse in which we had installed The Measurement Shop in collaboration with Tangled Feet Theatre Company during our arts festival.

We were interested in the idea that school might become more of an event than a building in the future. Our Tallis Lab curriculum is concerned with exploring the benefits of Web 2.0 tools and a more project based approach to learning and we have begun to make really effective use of blogging, web design and social media. We admired the work of visionaries like Sugata Mitra and the research of Charlie Leadbeater on education innovation.

Our experience at the conference was fascinating. We established a school (of sorts) in an unofficial corner of the conference hall (Booth 100.5) and engaged delegates with a variety of tasks hosted on our #popupschool website. We used Twitcam to broadcast live from the stage during our presentation. We made films, did research, created podcasts - mostly from our new iPod Touch devices equipped with the relevant apps - iMovie, Audioboo, Tumblr etc. The younger students sang songs in the foyer (rather like a Flashmob event) or asked a series of challenging, open-ended questions. We aimed to give our students an opportunity to engage with adults as equals, co-learners and to publish their thoughts and reflections to a real audience online.

The response was very positive:

#popupschool was by far my favourite thing at the #CWF2010 RT @shannoninottawa the future is unwritten http://bit.ly/dzpt4d

One blogger even suggested that the concept of a Pop Up School could apply to music lessons.

The most valuable lesson we learned was just how easy and powerful it is to connect with other learners and learning professionals (we're not very fond of the word teacher) in far off places. Tammy Parks at Howe High School was our partner in the project and has proved to be an inspirational colleague and a leading figure in our PLNs (Personal Learning Networks). We conducted several Skype conversations with her and her students in the lead up to the conference and we were inspired by her story. Howe is literally in the middle of nowhere. It is 3 hours from the nearest town. The school is smaller than one of our year groups at Tallis and, apart from the school building, the only other significant architectural features in Howe are the convenience store and the lumber yard. Despite this, Tammy and her husband Scott (the superintendent of the school district) have created an ICT rich learning environment using state of the art equipment. The school uses a satellite truck to conduct virtual field trips. They have high quality video conferencing equipment and lead learning experiments across the United States. Their physical isolation has been a spur to innovation. In order to give their students access to 21st century learning they have harnessed the power of the internet and the skills of broadcast journalism to connect them with the rest of the world.

Oh, and we met Sir Ken Robinson too. What a trip!

Wallwisher

I've created this Wallwisher page which is designed to collect our ambitions for this year's activities as a School of Creativity. I've posted a few ideas that we've already discussed but it would be great to have a whole wall full of everyone's thoughts. You can post a sticky and link to another web resource if appropriate. Once we have posted our thoughts we can then use this as a basis for prioritising actions and delegating responsibilities.

The Art of Listening

I met John Riches, our Creative Agent, very briefly this afternoon for a chat about our progress as a School of Creativity. We had a very productive talk, mostly about what we might hope to achieve by the end of this academic year and what our ambitions for next year might be. I think we are both now in agreement that the work this summer, that will contribute to you all hopefully achieving an Arts Mark Silver Award, might be better conceived as a series of smaller events/happenings/interventions rather than one huge one. Here are some ideas for you to mull over before next Tuesday's meeting:

• I am hoping to talk to an ex student who is now a playwright and theatre director about the possibility of Tallis hosting a performance of a new improvised piece called "Home" by the company Tangled Feet.
• We could commission a range of artists to respond to the school environment using a variety of strategies (sound, illustration, graffiti etc.) so that work is installed at the weekend and we return to unexplained and surprising spaces on Monday morning
• We could commission the Sixth Form Guerilla Art squad under the direction of our artist in residence Michael Shaw, to complete a series of interventions in the spaces of the current building. They have already developed some work along these lines and I can ask Mike (who is a very respected sound artist in his own right) to tell us more about what they've been doing at a future meeting.
• We could work with a photographer to create unusual photographic representations of the building
  
• We could present our manifesto for a Creative Tallis to parents at a special event and ask parents to volunteer their talents in future school projects
  
• We could attend a future Leadership Team meeting to present what we've been up to and make recommendations about the support we need from the school to move the creativity agenda forward

I realise that these ideas don't really fully capture the more ambitious ideas about transforming the school into a kind of game experience. I wonder if we might need a bit more time to make this work effectively? I would appreciate your thoughts about this. I suggested to John that we could use some time in the summer holidays to work more intensively with various practitioners to plan this project (a kind of creativity summer school). We could then hope to stage this event in the Autumn Term.

Finally, I would like to draw your intention to The Experiment. It is a podcast created by Kevin Quigley for The Institute of Contemporary Arts. It's a bit bonkers but, if you like strange music and abstract soundscapes, yu'll love this. I particularly like the episode entitled "The Art of Listening Part 1". Check it out!

Rivington Place

Thanks to everyone who visited Rivington Place today and contributed lots of valuable ideas. I thought the Liminal exhibition provoked plenty of fascinating debate and helped to fuel a brief but exciting brainstorming session. Don't forget that we have arranged to meet every Tuesday at 3:45pm in Room 80C (the sixth form computer room) so that we can continue planing our summer events and gain our Arts Award accreditations.

Here is a summary of what we discussed in the afternoon session:

Tom really liked the theme of change and the use of role play in a radical alteration of the physical space of the current school building. What might it be like to transform the school into a country ruled by a despotic leader? Could we change the function of internal spaces, create our own currency and economic conditions, form a government, arrange political protests etc.?

Amber and Matthew definitely wanted to change the building, especially the corridors and other in-between spaces using sound. How could we explore the idea of absence and leaving a building behind? What does the building sound like? The school appears very geometric, doesn’t look very engaging from the outside but is interesting inside. How important is sound in learning? Could we create a Maze/Labyrinth type game using the whole site? A promenade performance or quest? What for? Moving between locations where performances/activities take place. Changing perceptions of the school building and what happens in it. Demonstrating the importance of new media technologies in learning. The element of surprise; the unexpected. Part of a consultative process with parents that could become an annual event. Need a place to gather at the end of the event – a meal and conversation.

Billy and Tom wanted to create a massive game of Quasar Laser to engage parents and students in learning together. Young people become experts. Could use Twitter to keep a record of a conversation about learning. Guide visitors around the school. Turn the school into an alien landscape using special effects, a series of strange occurrences and making the school unrecognisable through strange lighting. Perhaps we could change the story about school; create a different narrative about learning by challenging conventions and expectations about how learning is structured.

I am really looking forward to reading your reviews of the exhibition. This is your first task for the Arts Award. Perhaps you could add your thoughts as (very long and detailed) comments to this post?