Partners in creativity: action research and creative partnerships

Abstract

The Government's recent Creative Partnerships initiative in England represents part of the resurgence of interest in creativity which was stimulated by the NACCCE's 1999All our futures report. However, many questions remain about the impact and processes of creative partnerships. The field of creativity research has been dominated by two key questions: how should creativity be defined and is it possible to teach creativity? Much has been written which attempts to shed light on the answers to these questions so it is important that creative partnerships' work is understood in the context of what it already known from research and theory. A welcome aspect of Creative Partnerships is the desire to ensure an evidence base to support the creative work happening in schools. Frequently this evidence base has been built in part by using action research methodology which has a strong track record in the context of practitioner research. This paper reports on work done with Creative Partnerships which involved the use of an action research framework to support creative work. It is concluded that there are potential problems with assuming that creativity will be enhanced by approaches such as multiple intelligence without careful thought about the way in which creativity is defined. It is also shown that action research does have the potential to enhance creative work but that one of the most important aspects of this is the relationships that are built between mentors and teachers.