Today's ARG meeting

We had a really great meeting this morning and welcomed our two new members from Year 8, Will and Joe. We began with Danuta and Phoebe's re-working of the Manifesto for a Creative Tallis:

We ENCOURAGE all learners to:
become curious, imaginative and innovative
take risks, accept challenges and learn from mistakes
reflect on their learning experiences

We SUPPORT our students to become:
resourceful, active and independent learners
effective collaborators and communicators
co-creators of the curriculum

We BELIEVE:
in the exchange of skills and knowledge between students and staff
that skills should be transferable
that new technologies are a crucial part of learning

We VALUE:
our students' talents, skills and interests and provide opportunities to develop them further
feedback and ideas from students about their learning experiences
effective communication about creative learning with parents, carers and members of the local community

We had a look at The Rebel's Manifesto by Keri Smith for comparison. We felt that the more direct and provocative language of that document might improve our own manifesto.

In small groups we discussed ways to further refine the Tallis Manifesto, feeding back to the whole team. Here are some of the suggestions:

Joe, Will & Danuta:

More accessible language needed. “Be curious, Take risks” Short, snappy phrases. More like instructions. Maybe lose the “We”. “Don’t be afraid to be afraid”, “Ask questions”

Tom, Seb & Rachel:

Different manifestos for range of audiences e.g. students, teachers. Should there be a division?

Recipe or creative learning – video, dance, song

Humour? What skills do the group have that could help to promote the manifesto?

Phoebe & Matt:

Who is the manifesto for? Use the word “learners” and “creative community” – more inclusive.

When should it be implemented – assembly, tutor time, focus on Creative Tallis – direct response of learners. How to make it more interactive?

We also talked about the various ways in which we could re-present the Manifesto to the community and came up with the following list:

Video, Interactive web resource – definitions of some of the words, Assemblies, Tutor Time, Song

There is a lot of work still to do on the Manifesto so we agreed to meet fortnightly from now on - Week A Thursdays at 4pm. We also agreed that Tom would be bringing the juice and biscuits next time! Thanks to everyone in the team for their energy and ideas.

Action Research Group Meeting

We met today for the second time this year. I updated the group on progress made since our last meeting as follows:

• The Year 7 family learning with mobile technology project (we need a better name for this!) is progressing well. We have purchased 20 new iPod Touches with parasync and protective case. We are writing home to parents about the project and will launch it officially at a parents' consultation event next week.
• The trip to Oklahoma for the Creativity World Forum was a real success. More info can be found here. We made several great connections with other educators, particularly in Canada and in Oklahoma (Howe High School).

I have invited new members to the group to become authors of this blog.

We took a quick look at the Manifesto for a Creative Tallis and agreed to refresh it. Here is a link to the Google Doc version of the document.

We agreed to meet next out of schedule on Wednesday 15 December at 4pm.

The agenda for the next meeting includes the following items:

1. Reviewing the Manifesto
2. Contributing to the ARG blog
3. Researching examples of best practice in promoting creative learning and sharing the evidence of the website.
   

First meeting of the new academic year

The Creative Tallis Action Research Group met for the first time this academic year this morning. We have a great combination of new and existing members with the adults outnumbered by students. We really appreciate the students attending this morning since they would officially start school today an hour later. Some of them, in fact, only came in at all because they belong to the ARG. Very noble!

Our discussion focused on three things:

1. What do we want to achieve this year?
2. Who do want to collaborate with?
3. Who will benefit?

After a detailed and lively discussion we agreed to three foci for the year:

1. Developing a creative learning conference/Teechmeet and supporting the whole school creativity festival in the summer term
2. Establishing a creative learning project with a groups of Year 7 students (and their parents/carers) using handheld technologies. The idea would be to encourage the students to document their positive experiences of learning so that these can be shared with the whole community and inform the development of our pedagogy.
3. Working in collaboration with the maths, English and science faculties to develop inter-disciplinary creative learning strategies, possibly through a Teacher Exchange programme.

Thanks for everyone's contributions today. It promises to be a very exciting year again for us.

Minutes of our ARG meeting

Minutes of the meeting

Present: HW, JN, Chenai, Billy, Matthew, KH, Kristy

1. Brief review of activities last term. Lots of opportunities to respond to external initiatives so would like more control of our own plans for the next two terms.
   
2. Mr Hawes showed us a film made by Web & Play (www.webplay.org) Should we invite Sydney Thornbury to talk to us about what we do and what her company could offer to our primary partners? Yes. Could be a transition project about primary secondary transfer.
   
3. We looked at Battlefront 2 (www.battlefront.co.uk) - young people's campaign website (with spin-off TV programme) Would any of the group like to take part?
4. 'CreateVoice' V&A Youth Forum 16-21 year olds. Would be useful for anyone interested in working in the creative industries.
5. How could we work successfully with Tangled Feet again? Mr Nicholls described the Facebook Feedback project and a conversation he has had with Kat Joyce about creating a kind of opera based on the stories and memories of the existing and ex-communities of Thomas Tallis School - a kind of social history. Could the Student Commissioning Group take responsibility for co-ordinating this project? John Riches (Creative Agent) visiting on 19th January to help establish this group. Who would be members of this group? How will they be selected?
   
6. How do we encourage all subjects in the school to become more creative? How can we help to track, measure and evaluate the impact of creative learning across the school? We looked at the feedback from faculties. How could we help to highlight/showcase/interrogate creative learning in each area? Should we start with a faculty that is already very positive about creative learning E.g. Maths?
7. Skills Swap - Posters have appeared around the school. We are not sure quite how this will work but we are still keen on the idea of staff and students working together swapping skills. We will create a display in the staff room for staff to "Seek" a skill and "Offer" a skill in return. How do we engage students effectively?
8. We have begun to arrange possible pairs to engage in a version of "Faking It!" The idea will be to create 4 mini documentaries involving teacher swaps from different disciplines by half term. We then hope to involve more members of staff later in the year.

Meeting ended: 4:30pm

Meeting with our national School of Creativity advisor

We are fortunate to be meeting our new School of Creativity advisor on Monday. His name is Julian Sefton-Green and he is a leading authority in the following fields:

• youth, media and technology
• regeneration, community and education policy
• creativity, learning and arts research.

This is a great opportunity for us to gain a national perspective from Julian about creative learning in the context of our own regeneration project, our community cohesion agenda and our interest in new technologies, emerging literacies and digital media. Julian's experience of working with young people in a variety of contexts (most recently at WAC) and his research about learning and creative production beyond the classroom, will help us to frame our own thinking about curriculum reform and the transition to the new school.

Here is the agenda for the day:

9.50 – 10.50 Meet with Rob Thomas, Headteacher

Break

11.10 – 12.10 Meeting with Jon Nicholls, Arts College Manager

12.10 – 1.10 Lunch with staff and students in the Creativity ARG Group (Room 208)

1.10 – 2.10 TallisLAB Staff INSET session with Soren Hawes, Creative Learning Co-Ordinator, Andrew Davids, Lead Teacher of Creative Learning, Jon Nicholls, John Riches, Creative Agent
and staff delivering the TallisLAB course

2.10 – 2.40 Feedback to Rob Thomas and Jon Nicholls

2.40 – 3.10 Further discussion with Rob Thomas (if required)

I hope many of you can make the lunch meeting in 208. Your collective contribution to our achievements as a School of Creativity have been very impressive and I am sure Julian would be interested in how we work together and your ideas for the future.

Thank You

Just wanted to say a BIG THANK YOU to all the members of the ARG for helping to present the Manifesto to (almost) the whole staff body this afternoon. I hope you found the experience interesting. I'm especially grateful to the students who stayed much longer than normal and having managed the difficult process of interviewing candidates for the Tangled Feet residency prior to the meeting. It would be good to get an update on how this went and what your plans are for the week of the 29th. I'd like to suggest that you are all involved in the project with Tangled Feet so that you can benefit from their ideas, get involved in some of the activities and, most importantly, help to document what happens. Those of you planning to enter yourselves for the Arts Award will be able to get some great evidence for your portfolios. Anyroadup, you were great this afternoon and a credit to the school. Cheers team!