Creative Partners: Arts Practice and the Potential for Pupil Voice

Abstract

Recently in English schools the value of ‘pupil voice’ activities has been strongly promoted by the school improvement movement and by the Office for Standards in Education, the national inspection agency. A parallel and related agenda in English education policy has seen the official endorsement of the importance of developing creativity in school. This article is concerned with the potential of creative and arts activities to extend the range and types of children's and young people's opportunities to participate meaningfully in school and to have their voices heard. The article draws on data from the Creative School Change Project, an Arts Council funded investigation into the impact of the Creative Partnerships [CP] programme on whole-school change. CP funds artists and creative practitioners to work in partnership with schools in socio-economically disadvantaged areas. The authors argue that the literature that categorises and promotes pupil voice pays insufficient attention to the potential of artistic/aesthetic discourses amongst pupils in school, and that such discourses make an important contribution to democratic school cultures. They suggest that the work of CP within the group of schools identified in this article demonstrates how ‘pupil voice’ activities, now officially sanctioned in schools, might be expanded and modified by creative practice.