Author: drnicko

Awarded an MBE for services to arts-based businesses, I am passionate about generating inspiring, socially engaging, creative practice within educational contexts both nationally and internationally.

How does a creative school become a creative city?

Many cities around the world present themselves as undergoing programmes of regeneration by aiming to engage the efforts of the local ‘creative communities‘ for the benefits of the city and and presenting themselves as a site of creativity and hub of contemporary culture.

In The Rise of the Creative Class Richard Florida interprets these ‘creative communities’ as a creative class: latter day, Platonic philosopher rulers, requiring ‘less creative’ members of society who struggle to cite a single classical composer or who don’t know their Michael Jackson from their Jackson Pollock, to provide services and facilities which they – the creative classes – are either too busy, preoccupied or aloof to have to contend with themselves.

Ironically, the city’s desire to democratise creativity, to become an attractive place for ‘the creatives’ and to make creativity a gregarious cultural process tends to generate a hierarchical structure of city boundaried privileged locations of loft conversions and artistic architraves amongst the archetypes.

Jamie Peck’s analysis of Florida suggests that: Florida’s street level analog of such attempts to ‘harness’ creativity comes in the form of a celebration of the buzzing, trendy neighborhood, a place where everyday innovation occurs through spontaneous interaction… a place where outsiders can quickly become insiders’…

Schools who wish to develop creativity in the classroom perhaps begin to resemble creative cities as outsiders are encouraged to visit them with the enticements of earning potential or employment, becoming in the process a veritable market place for creative practitioners.

Peck continues to identify what is required of a city to make the transformation to a creative city by referring to the development of a Tool-kit for Cities by Cortwright, for the American management consultancy, Impresa and Coletta:

Impresa and Coletta’s Tool-Kit for Cities

* Deliver an ‘appealing reality’, because ‘young people are very savvy in assessing cities’;
* Put values on display, demonstrating how the city ‘welcomes newcomers and new ideas’;
* Keep in touch with former residents, and find ways to have them ‘return to your city’;
* Create opportunities for civic involvement, deliberately seeking out the opinions of young people;
* Use internships to connect with young adults;
* Survey young adults regularly, including ‘exit interviews’;
* Celebrate young entrepreneurs and civic contributors;
* Communicate development plans to young adults;
* Promote your city: ‘place marketing works best when it is based on authentic stories that people are willing to tell about their cities’;
* Promote a young adult lifestyle, particularly ‘active nightlife’, and do not be fearful that this might ‘scare off the soccer moms’

Mapping out these criteria for creative cities against schools OfSTED reports offers some tentative support to the notion that schools, rather than places of teaching and learning actually are better described as creative cities. The pedagogical implications of seeing a school as a city are immense and will be explored in later blogs.

Helping doesn’t only not help, it also un-helps.

Differentiation in classrooms is presented as a means of ensuring children with lesser abilities engage with the curriculum, children with moderate abilities wrestle it and children with higher abilities transcend it. For the higher ability children, there is the allure of extension activities too which enable them to explore bigger existential and metaphorical challenges than whether they are a Level 4+ or 5- in literacy.

The problem is that differentiation may well have the opposite effect that it intends. By separating out ‘lower ability’ children means that everyone knows who they are – and to everyone then staring at who’s on the top table. This can lead to those ‘lower’ ability children switching off and becoming even less able than they had been previously; until of course they find themselves in a learning situation which is undifferentiated and at which they find themselves at the same starting gate as their alleged more talented peers. This is the case that many artists offer when they visit schools and work with so called ‘mixed ability’ classes.

A music friend told me of a case where he was trying to help a young girl count on the beat by cueing her in with a downward arm movement. This had quite the opposite effect in that it led to her being completely confused by the notion of coming in on the beat and switched her off from the task altogether. His attempted helping of her led to being significantly ‘unhelped’ and in differentiation parlance, she moved from medium to low ability in the wave of a hand and would have found herself sitting at the musical dunces table had such a table existed in that classroom.

The notion that helping can cause the opposite of the desired effect has its echoes in how complexity theory informs school improvement improvement agendas. Complexity theory would suggest that the emergence of school league table winners causes the emergence of school league table losers. When schools are engaged in competitions for pupil numbers, for positions on a league table, for higher CVA ratings, it is not as if they are running on an Olympic race track with competing athletes to see who can run 100m the fastest: this competition means that the ‘front runners’ are partially responsible for disrupting the state of the race track of those lagging ‘behind’. They may have started at the same starting gate (which is unlikely) – but the high achieving schools then manage to dig up the race track for those who are slightly behind them; leading to the winners winning by an even bigger margin than they demonstrated at the start of ‘the race’.

Our differentiation of lower, mid and higher ability pupils similarly is not one merely of categorising pupils competences: it also acts to cause those differences in those competences and so un-helps the very people it is trying to help.

Hunter turns hunted: inspector turns inspectee?

In the Greek myth, the renowned hunter, Actaeon comes across, allegedly by mistake, Artemis bathing in a pool, naked – or, if you work in a school, without her hunting tunic on. In a moment of fury, she curses him, leaving him without the power of speech and more unluckily for him, turning him into a stag. His own hounds set upon him and tear him apart until there is nothing left of him, apart from his own hunting tunic, laying mournfully on the ground, dripping in blood, wondering where its once proud wearer had got to.

Actaeon is the mythic story of hunter turned hunted, of poacher turned gamekeeper, of your metamorphosis into something you once sought to control and even destroy. In schools these days, it is the story of dread of every inspector – turning into an inspectee, or even worse, a teacher.

The school inspector will be pleased that they are unlikely to find themselves in similar circumstances. In just doing their job, and by just dropping into a schools for a friendly bit of school improvement, they will be relieved that one day they will not find themselves at the end of a vicious cursing onslaught from a head teacher, not turned into a teacher and not  then face the demanding ears eyes and mouths of the children who will torment them to an early ignominious messy ending.

The school inspector will be relieved that in the absence of any Greek mythic influences in schools – or Ted Hughes at the very least – they are unlikely to be turned from inspector to inspectee next to the school’s water cooler.

That will be good news for school inspectors, but perhaps disappointing news for those schools who will be facing their next inspection in the coming weeks. They would do well to swot up on their Ted Hughes as well as their School Improvement Plan.

Failing that, they could always take a leaf out of the Jim Carrey film, The Truman Show, which would help them immensely to make the inspector feel at home:
https://drnicko.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/the-ofsted-inspection-how-to-be-in-your-very-own-truman-show/

The Saturday Rough Guide: Devising Community Theatre

Devised theatre is something you either fear and loath, in which you dread the personal haranguing, the criticism from peers and the complete and utter lack of confidence in the material you have come up with…

… or it can be something you come to love and respect in which you are exhilarated by the challenges it presents, the surprises it generates and the moments of understanding and clarity it presents.

When it works well, you come to realise that there’s nothing (much) else in the world that’s worth the aggravation…

… for the rest of us mere mortals the trick is to survive it and try and enjoy it somewhere along the line.

The devising process is as individual as there stars in the heavens: what shines for one person becomes a imploded neutron star of despair for someone else. Consequently this is not a definitive, authoritarian guide. It should be seen as a series of possibilities which you should adapt and tailor to you own particular style and ‘voice’.

THE PROCESS

Devising is a bit like a completing a jigsaw puzzle without having the benefit of having the box top with the completed picture in front of you. There is no mystery to making devised work: the trick is, as our old Danish colleague, Jakob Oschlag, pointed out is to:

KNOW WHERE YOU ARE IN THE PROCESS

If you have worked on devised work before, you’ll recognise that sections of the process (outlined below) can bleed into each other; you’ll also recognise sections which you’re particularly good at and particularly poor at.

In summary they might go like this…

1. Gather and collect: Personnel, ideas, facts, figures, whims, daydreams, ‘what ifs’, impossible scenarios, dull ideas, bright ideas, snatches of speech, the flotsam and jetsam of everyday and not so every day life.

2. Building components: Where are the connections between your collections? What do they lead to? What links suggest themselves?

3. Building infrastructure: Finding the world your production inhabits, its main protagonists, its central ideas, its main arguments.

4. Shaping: Combining the components into the infrastructure. Not being afraid to jettison structures that don’t fit (they may belong to another project which you are unaware of at this point in time) or changing the infrastructure itself. “Killing your darlings” is a phrase you might hear here a lot.

5. Focusing: Focusing the form and content of your piece; being sure that everything in it has a purpose, a role and a function. Making sure essential bits aren’t left out and that un-necessary bits aren’t left in.

6. Rehearsing: Getting the work into a fit shape for presentation. Concentrating on production values to ensure a polished, confident and convincing piece of work.

SOME COMMON HURDLES AND STEREOTYPES YOU’LL ENCOUNTER ALONG THE WAY

1. Anything goes… but everything need not stay
Somewhere at the beginning of the process you are likely to experience that blood rush of having lots of exciting, creative ideas which you are burning to tell the whole group about and get them to take it on board. This is fine and natural and absolutely right for the beginning of the process.

Chances are though that probably everybody will go through that in the group… and that whilst it is the group leaders responsibility to try and look at every idea coming to them , they are not likely to commit to every idea that arrives.

The process of sifting and editing is an essential part of editing; and whilst you may have the most glorious idea and vision, you should accept that it may not be suitable for the particular piece at that particular time and you should be prepared to let that idea drift away should the time come.

This is painful first time round, especially if you have spent a great deal of energy coming up with the idea in the first place but is something you need to come to terms with. Kill Your Babies is something you might hear a lot here.

The thing to remember is that your idea, whilst not necessarily visible, will have caused innumerable and indefinable connections and ideas to have surfaced and so will have had a valuable function in helping create the final piece.

Its also worth remembering that if you get hung up on ‘your idea’ or ‘my idea’ or ‘their ideas’ that actually, ideas belong to no-one and are ten a penny. Ideas are important but not sufficient in their own. Bringing them to a public is as important as their initial generation.

2. The Company of 0 Directors

In an attempt to be democratic, the company of 0 Directors has an individual (the invisible director) who tries their hardest to be the nice guy, the one who wants to minimise (or avoid) conflict and is loathe to upset anyone. The invisible director refuses to make any decision about the project and usually includes every single contribution gathered. This often leads to a piece which is variously seen as surreal or confusing or a mess. It might challenge existing structures or notions of art work but then again it may not: the danger is that it will confuse and dispirit the participants, leading them to feel they won’t get involved in anything ever again. This can lead onto the next syndrome:

2. The Company of 1000 Directors

The first phase of devising is often a very creative, stimulating and exhilarating time what with so much creativity and energy flying around the rehearsal room. However there comes a point, maybe a third of half way into the process where someone needs to start shaping the ideas and structuring them into a performance. This is usually the job of the director (or MD or writer or choreographer) and you may find the way they work a bit alarming after all the freefloating energy and sense of democracy which should have prevailed up until the time they step in.

They may appear short-sighted, blinkered, unlistening or even rude and abrupt. This is because at this point in the process, it is essential that decisions regarding the final structure and content of the piece need to be taken and something approaching the ‘vision’ of the piece needs to established and communicated. Chances are this is best done by a director working with the MD or other relevant staff on the project.

In the absence of this structuring job, the company may revert to the Company of 0 Director syndrome. The temptation often for the other devisors at this point is to chip in and start directing everybody else in the group. This way anarchy lies, especially with a large group, and is something to be avoided where possible.

Pitch a Film for a Friday: STUCK!

And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime

A series of twelve five minute observational vignettes, Stuck portrays the tragi-comic stories of 12 people who are stuck: stuck in what look like bizarre routines to outsiders but to themselves, make perfect sense of their everyday if somewhat unconventional – some might say unsettling lives. It’s about outsider’s attempts to ‘unstick’ those people and connect them with ‘normality’ – when it was a bad dose of ‘normality’ which is what put our characters in their predicament in the first place.

Stuck-ees include:

Edith, 70, lives in an OAP home – she’s Polish, had – according to her photo album – a life of partying, family and good times – but now, after a stroke, can only speak 15 words of Polish in a perpetual cycle, broken up by her occasional and obvious frustration that she can’t say anything else. Her speech therapist tries to snap her out of this cycle using a variety of speech therapy methods – and just when she thinks she’s about to succeed, it appears that Edith resorts to her 15 word mantra, thwarting her therapist, her family and perhaps herself.

Paul, an old man of indeterminate age or background who cycles up and down the same road in Liverpool, searching the bins, very early every Monday morning. His encounters with the local traffic police and milk men offer no clues as to why he takes this route everyday but a wheelie bin cleaner has taken to Paul and attempts to connect to him by talking to him daily, engaging him in conversations about peoples bins and finding out what makes him tick – or what makes him stuck.

Ben, a 29 Geordie ex-student of 8 years who since leaving college has developed a highly successful business in selling Class A drugs. His business has various unsocial side effects though – and consequently he has found himself housebound, a prisoner of his success for the last 3 years, unable to make any contact with anyone outside his bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.

STUCK offers no sociological explanations or theories to our character’s ‘stuckiness’ but offers us an opportunity to review our own habits, obsessional behaviours and opportunity to ask ourselves, ‘well, how did I get here?’

Flow: prayer for a provisional ending

As life begins
The circle of evolution continues
Life flows through my body
like the wind blows through nature.

Flowing beside the city
Beside the river
Down by the docks
Along the far side of the port,

My words and stories evolve into thoughts and memories
and through these
my world becomes a performance.

A place where the boats fill up
The seagulls fly straight
And the passengers look out
To a place and time

Where my imagination flows
My humanity becomes a performance
Where possibilities begin
And end and begin again.

The tide surges
It falls back
The salmon are left on the shoreline
Waiting for the signals

To call them back
To the ocean
And back to the stream
They left in their youth.

But will the flow ever end?

Composed with Emily Frodsham on the morning of the death of Steve Jobs, as part of the final performance of the Flow Community Arts Autumn School, Sigdal, Norway.

Geoff Pennycook, in memoriam.

Poetry on the Hoof: Terraced? Semi? Detached? Year 7 plan their future homes.

You gotta decide the lighting,
It’s November, remember.
You gotta agree,
Sort it out reasonably.
You gotta think it out,
You’ve gotta act quick.
Silence hush descends.

You’ll need pools of light
You’ll need water, air, space.
Somewhere to park the car
When the days close in.
Can I get a red phone box?
Can I get an allotment?
Silence hush descends.

You’re gonna see nothing
With windows like that.
You’re gonna be a resident, remember.
You’re gonna freeze to death
With walls like that.
Are we gonna pretend?
That we have to pay mortgages an’ ‘owt?
Silence hush descends.

You gotta make a choice,
Or you’re gonna get stuck.
Best to say little,
If you’re not sure.
If you don’t wanna pay for ‘owt can we live in a toilet?
We could use our imagination.
Silence hush descends.

Everyone’s gotta live somewhere
Everyone’s gotta have a place
They can call their own.
But if you’re gonna want a family.
But if you’re gonna get you a mortgage,
You gotta be quick,
You gotta be sharp,
You gotta get rid of those ghosts that moved onto your land.
Silence hush descends.

Some responses by then young people of Kingstone School, Barnsley to recent exhortations to a ‘Housing Revolution’. Readers may be interested to know about similar revolutions being plotted in education.

The rhetoric of crisis is also echoed in housing and education too here.

Reading the Riots – hearing the real evidence

I’m working as a researcher for the Guardian LSE Reading the Riots project in which they’re trying to find the background and reasons for the summer disturbances from the point of view of the perpetrators, those who have been charged and locked up, or those who found themselves involved for one reason or another.

The research is completely anonymous and confidential. If you would be interested in being interviewed for the research – or know someone who would be, please get in touch.

It will give you or them a great chance to put their side of the story, but in a way that is not connected at all to the police or government.

Please email me on Nowen.aspire@btconnect.com.

The full research team can be seen here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/reading-the-riots-blog/2011/oct/10/reading-the-riots?newsfeed=true

What’s different about the development of International Community Artists? Flowing towards international community arts practice in Norway

To re-write Peter Brook in his 1987 book, The Shifting Point:

What do we need from performance? What do we bring to the event? What in the artisti process needs to be prepared, what needs to be left free? What is narrative? What is character? Does the event tell something or does it work through a sort of intoxication? What belongs to physical energy, what belongs to emotion, what belongs to thought? What can be taken from an audience, what must be given? What responsibilities must we take for what we leave behind? What change can a performance bring about? What can be transformed?

Big questions from a big man and exactly the questions emergent community artists should always be asking of themselves.

What are we looking for from those young artists? And how does their training differ from an actor’s, or dancer’s or visual artist’s training? What are the differences between an ‘actor’ and a ‘performer’ in a community based context? Whilst arts skills are clearly essential for fledgling artists, are they the be-all and end-all?

Artists working a community contexts may well find themselves working in a number of different contexts which require them to play very different roles:
* actors in a Theatre in Education (TiE) shows
* Master of Ceremonies (MC) in a club or community centre,
* teachers in class,
* preachers in funding meetings
* actors in a ‘straightforward’ show in a theatre,
* facilitators with a group of young people,
* interactive performers in a museum or gallery,
* as a TV, video or radio presenter.

The relationship of the performer to ‘text’ is an interesting issue to start exploring. A lot of performance work may be in devised / improvised productions in which ‘text’ will not necessarily be language based, and is often unlikely to be the first impulse to a production. ‘Text’ as we know it may not even appear until after the production has ‘finished’.

Our relationship with ‘The Author of the Text’ who is somehow above or separate to our process will be radically different from a context which is designed to honour and respect the word of the author above everything else. One consequence of this could be, for example, that we have to reconsider whether and when the notion of us developing in-depth character psychological profiles, performed in naturalistic, ‘4th Wall’ settings which require little in the way of audience participation are of relevance to us.

Flowing towards contemporary community arts practice continues to exercise the youngest and oldest of practitioners and the advent of social networking in recent years means that old assumptions about the identity of individuals and groups has to be completely re-thought.

Further work on Flow: the Norwegian International Autumn School in Community Arts in Sigdal, Norway, here: