The role of technology in education: new rope for old tricks?

As a parent governor for my local primary school, I'm trying to develop ways of supporting work with ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in the classroom. This post is simply an attempt to capture some initial thoughts about the topic and the challenges this presents, and to document some potentially useful sources of information for colleagues teaching in the school.

Common with many parents, teachers and educationalists, I continue to wrestle with the issue of the role of technology in education and the wider impact of technology on childhood development. Having written about technology and creativity quite recently (You can read a book chapter of mine on this topic here: goo.gl/ovQh4E), I won't try to hide the fact that I am an advocate for the beneficial potential of technology, but I am also acutely aware of the challenges presented in seeking to make effective use of technology in the classroom and the potential for 'devices' to isolate rather than engage, distract rather than focus, and to lead rather than follow.

Banksy's observation about technology and human intimacy and interaction

In seeking to establish the 'current position' regarding ICT in primary education, the DfE (Department for Education) in the UK states very clearly that:

'The national curriculum programmes of study for ICT at key stages 1 and 2  have been disapplied with effect from 1 September 2012 and are no longer statutory.

This means that schools are free to develop their own curricula for ICT that best meet the needs of their pupils, or to continue to follow the existing programmes of study if they so choose. ICT remains a compulsory National Curriculum subject at all four key stages. Revised programmes of study for ICT will come into force in September 2014.'

goo.gl/5YDNPm

In this respect we are in limbo and waiting for 'revised programmes' to 'come into force' this coming September. We might, however, develop reasonable guesses as to what these may involve and we can rest assured that there will remain a distinction between ICT as a defined discipline (the emergence of coding as a primary classroom activity for example and increased focus in the past year as we enter the 'Year of Code': goo.gl/HiirZV--many useful resources here: goo.gl/hEEX3S), and the role of technology in supporting learning and teaching across a range of subjects.

Now in terms of what teachers want from ICT, this is relatively straightforward; Technology needs to be accessible (affordable and available). The single most effective way to develop expertise as a teacher with new technologies is to live with them. The practical issues of access to technology in the context of constrained funding will be addressed in a future post. There are ways of doing amazing things without incredible budgets.

goo.gl/xK6NuZ

In terms of how teachers see the potential for learning through technology, the simple openness and richness of information afforded by the web is enough to convince most of the inevitable benefits of technology in the classroom. Technology motivates learning, provides richness of content, enables personalisation and flexibility, and can fundamentally enrich the process of teaching. My teaching career began with overhead projectors, transparencies and chalk boards (I still use white boards for the physicality and flexibility but hated OHPs), but I now focus on the development of interactive content, rich-media presentations and really enjoy putting teaching together. Technology really allows me to express myself in my teaching, to personalise and to structure material in ways that allow me to teach how I want. I now communicate and learn a huge amount via Twitter (@chriswilson101) and Linkedin (http://uk.linkedin.com/in/chriswilson101), and find Prezi (www.prezi.com), Google sites/docs, Dropbox, Storify (https://storify.com/), Keynote and Pages (Mac), the Microsoft Office suite (including the inevitable email), and many other applications, indispensable elements of my teaching practice. These things make teaching fun and more effective.

 

goo.gl/x1FzlN

In seeking to develop ICT practice in the classroom, there are many places to turn. Perhaps the most serendipitous example (emerging only this week) comes from ocTEL (Open Courses in Technology Enhanced Learning) at: goo.gl/rVBqw1. You can simply dip in and out of this but it is well worth a look.

Elsewhere, the UNESCO report ICT in Primary Education is well worth reviewing on this subject: http://iite.unesco.org/pics/publications/en/files/3214707.pdf. As is ICT for teaching assistant trainers: goo.gl/ZmLjS9.

Albeit dating from September 2012, Matt Britland's 'top five resources for teaching ICT and computer science' in the Guardian also remains worth reading (goo.gl/kK50Ju). Whilst focused on gamification, coding and the teaching of ICT as a cognate discipline, there are many insights about general use of ICT and some great teaching resources. Ross Morrison McGill's @Teachertoolkit blogs are also always worth reading. One in particular is an excellent 'Everything Indexed' post from August 2013: goo.gl/7qZhp9 which includes some interest ideas about ICT.

There are many excellent practitioners busy posting insights and ideas and there is a wealth of excellent resources for teachers as well as for teaching available online. I'll develop a more focused 'toolkit' approach for a future update but engagement with social media for professional development is, ultimately, a simple decision to be made rather than a skill to be developed. If you're reading this you are online. If you have a Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Blogger, Google or other platform accounts already active, you can simply have a look. It's amazing what you can discover that can quickly become a daily reference source for learning and teaching.

  Basic SWOT analysis of ICT in primary education

Technology can transform teaching and learning but let's not drift towards the notion that ICT is 'great for some learning styles'. The whole concept of learning styles is without foundation and positively proven to be nonsense in most key respects (Tom Bennet made this point quite forcefully in a recent TES connect blog at: goo.gl/kK50Ju). The role of technology should not be to pander to specific learner interests, but to enhance every aspect of learning for all.

Do you think children need to know more or less about technology in order to thrive personally and professionally now and in the future? Can you even imagine what the world will be like when, in future, our current children are answering questions of theirs about their experience of primary school?  In most respects I am sure experience will be profoundly different but there will be common features; teachers working with new ideas and new techniques, the integration of the latest technologies to support learning, and deeply important developmental relationships remembered with profound affection. Any given moment in any given lesson can become an indelible, unforgettable; a transformational moment. Technology might support this happening more routinely.

Technology is not a new thing. Education has always been disrupted by technology. Teaching is an old thing. Learning is an even older thing. Otherwise there would be no teacher.

More to come.

A manifesto of sorts: Creative involvement in local schools

I'm currently standing in a ballot at my daughter's school for the role of parent governer on the governing council. It's a serious position, one that I have applied for only after careful thought, and something I am sure would involve important work. All parents of children at the school are currently considering their vote and I thought it appropriate to outline both some specific reasons why I think I could make a positive contribution, and to provide some thoughts about parental involvement in schools more generally. This is a manifesto of sorts.

Firstly, I don't think there is 'a' right way to educate children, but I do believe there is a right way to educate every child. Children are different. Wildly different. They have different interests, aptitudes, capabilities, and preferred ways of exploring the world. Any parent with more than one child already know this because each is undoubtedly profoundly different at least in some key respects. This is seen as a major challenge for standardised education systems but I see this diversity as an opportunity. Of course there are challenges for teachers in meeting such a broad range of needs (against the odds of manic educational reform and debatable policy changes), but enrichment and even efficiency is possible. After all, if you can identify the most effective way of engaging learning, surely this could eventually become the most time efficient too? Couldn't we move closer to the 'best' way of doing this in better ways? One size never fits all, and often fits nobody.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/

Perhaps the biggest challenge for me in education is that of engagement and personalisation of learning. I've always resisted the notion that some aspects of educational experience are 'dull but necessary', the proverbial 'slog with payoff later'. However, far from advocating an 'effortless' or easy learning experience, I rather think that effort and hard work can be rewards in and of themselves, and the best way to foster such effort is both to personalise and make inevitable the processes involved. Finally, learning achievements need to be celebrated fully. Milestones and attainment needs to be acknowledged in order that horizons can be opened up and next steps identified.

Yes that's me. We wondered what 'digital graffiti would be like, up close...

I believe very much in immersive learning, the value of participation, and that ideas become capabilities when put into practice. Teaching and researching as I do in higher education, I have particular interests in learning and teaching and know from experience that ideas put into practice, challenged, and supported with interesting opportunities, are ones that seed personal growth and development most effectively. I believe ideas should be made real, exercised in physical ways, and moved from thinking to doing to knowing. 

I also feel very strongly about the co-creation of knowledge and the value of team-based activities in education. Alongside core knowledge and understanding, the social development of children in education is fostered by collaboration and enriched by diversity. Related to these factors I also have strong interest in emerging research about the 'gamification' of learning in education. It has often fascinated me that children can revel in competition and repeated 'failure' when playing board games or computer games, yet associate 'failure' with negative emotional experiences or set-backs in learning. Many educationalists are now discovering that education can be made more 'game like' and more 'team based' to positive overall effect. Learning anything can be fun, failure can make you stronger, and incremental success can be a triumph.

I work in education and the thing that lights me up, keeps me going, pushes me forward, is seeing the development of others. I appreciate that the most significant factor determining the quality of learning is the quality of teaching and the support for the learner. In education then the objective should be to improve teaching, focus on learners as individuals, and do everything possible to improve the quality of learning between learning activities. The quality of learning experience between classes and days at school is as important as the time in the classroom.

Something I saw in Oklahoma, US, a few years ago.... 

If I could change anything through my involvement as a school governer? Well, I would hope to support the development of playful cultures or learning and, most importantly, develop more active focus on creative teaching and creative learning. As my principle research expertise, creativity is an attribute that all learners and teachers can develop and something that can positively influence ethos and culture in educational environments.

I would also hope to do everything I could to increase the recognition of the teachers and teaching assistants given the central role they play in determining the quality of learning that takes place. It is the most important job in the world. Teachers are the most important people in the world. I would also like to consider though that parents and family members, whenever they support learning at home (homework or simple exploration of the world through play and discovery), are themselves teachers. The responsibility for our children's learning is fundamentally a shared responsibility. We are all teachers, and the support, encouragement and value associated with education require the management of a wider culture that extends far outside the school gates. Our children only have one opportunity to realise their potential and I hope it is the ambition of everyone that they exceed our own. Let's help our children transform, broaden their horizons and extend their ambitions of themselves and others.

Most importantly though, above anything else, I would want to draw more fully from the most underutilised source of expertise, energy and experience in school - the parents and families of the children. I feel slightly guilty for how much more I could have contributed to my daughter's school but I have put my name forward for election to the governing council as a first step. It's not just that I think I could help my own children, I think I could perhaps help others too. If someone in every child's family could do the same for the school, can you imagine what might be possible? Can you imagine how many professions, life stories, experiences, technical skills, and ideas that could be shared throughout the school community? A little, from many, becomes much.

Of course I fully intend to get more involved in the school whatever the result of the parental vote. I will simply try to get involved in other ways. But I will try. I will try.

Halfway between ideas - An idea for a creative thinking exercise

As seems to happen more regularly to me every year, I recently had occasion to find myself in an unfamilar building. The building itself is over 123 years old, Grade II listed, designed by Victorian architect Sir John Belcher, and situated in the heart of London. Carved stone friezes by Hamo Thorneycroft adorn the exterior and a lift takes you to one of the most unusual places I've ever been.

Floor 6 and a half was a surprising proposition. Unexpected and simultaneously empty and quiet, I found myself pausing, intrigued. It felt a bit silly, anarchic, playful, surreal. It was a personal first and something I was sure not many people I know will have experienced. It felt strangely exclusive to walk up what was technically 'half' a staircase and through doors into somewhere 'between'.

The experience of this place led me to reflect on 'between-ness' and 'halfway-ness' as facets of creativity. Creativity being fundamentally about moving into strange, unusual, and unfamiliar places, the emphasis in research can often be on transcendent discovery or inventiveness. However, creativity being something that is always derived from or associated with a particular domain or field, is often more subtle and characterised as a slight shift of phase in the shape, organisation or combination of existing things. Creative ideas are more often pleasing, seemingly obvious in retrospect, but slight shifts in orthodoxy.

This is particularly evident in the arts. Musical fusion or the hybridisation of artistic genres is routine. All artistic ideas emerge originally in the mind of one creative individual, and the mixture of personal experience inevitably leads to the crossover of experiences and arrival at pleasing half way places. With due deference to Saussure, Althusser and Lévi-Strauss and post-structuralist and postmodern theory, that the blurring of boundaries between ideas is significant and valuable is well established. However, I wonder simply if many creative ideas defined as 'combinations' of concepts would perhaps be more effectively considered of as halfway places or as creatively 'in-between'.

Why not adapt the classic creative thinking exercise (unusual combinations) and instead try to imagine:

• What is exactly half way between two separate problems?
• If a musical chord and a pirouette were at respective ends of a spectrum, what would be in the middle?
• If a car became an orange, what would it look like mid-way through the transformation?

I'm still working on the last one...

What would a creativity toolkit look like?

I'm setting out to build a creativity techniques inventory or 'toolkit' focused on higher education teaching and learning. Currently at the stage of thinking about this in somewhat general terms, I thought I would document a few initial thoughts and generally see what would happen if I simply started to type. I'm confident that a point or narrative integrity will emerge if I relax and concentrate less... (might chance favour the unprepared mind too?)

Original image: Pushing weights...

Firstly, it is perhaps worth trying to define the objectives, or at least to clarify the 'problem' that this project is trying to resolve: Creativity is an increasingly valued and almost feverishly sought attribute of university graduates in the employment market, and an underlying current of influence in changes to learning and teaching practice in higher education. There is, therefore, good reason to want accessible and efficient ways of developing creative capacity by learning and through (as well as of) teaching. I am, therefore, simply to trying to address this challenge here using traditional documentation and publication formats. I'll try other things (of course), but I wonder what a really useful, concise, beautiful, rigorous, and germinal creativity toolkit 'document' might look like? What would it take to persuade academic colleagues to engage with the information effectively and consequently add value to their teaching practice? What a great/impossible challenge...

Original image: Candy to a baby...

Now, there will clearly need to be a significant emphasis placed on signposting established creativity techniques and creativity research. Indeed, there already exists a considerable range of creativity techniques collections of which Michael Michalko's 'Thinkertoys' is an obvious and excellent example (and I already have a good grounding more generally in the wider academic literature). At the level of fundamental creative thinking, the scholarly landscape is well populated and capable of being pulled together effectively in some form of concise literature review. Remembering the underlying objectives for the project though, I have to be mindful of drifting into 'literature review' mode and to focus fundamentally on the objectives. This is not intended as a journal paper or academic lecture; this is intended to be something that will be actually used, applied and shared (irony optional). Ultimately, the aim will be to use text economically and creatively and to make useability and accessibility rather than depth of scholarship the core attributes.

Original image: Let's play a game...

In my experience, 'useful' for academics often means efficient, relevant and effective. Gone are the (probably fictional) days of truly open academic freedom and space to explore interesting things for the sake of exploration itself. Increasingly customer-focused and business-like in operation, research is challenging and competitive (for funding), academia subject to increasing numbers of performance indicators and quantitative and qualitative measurement, and information almost bewildering in its complexity and quantity. There is pressure for time and attention and the value of actually using the toolkit must therefore be an inherent, noticeable and immediate aspect of the document. I'll need to use visual metaphor quite a lot (more efficient means of communicating ideas than text hence the pictures in this blog), generally develop significant design and layout integrity, and maintain a clear focus on 'useability'. It may need to be beautiful and accessible to be useful at all. 

 Photo by Bryan Peters @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbandude/6165041212/

So, I think I'm trying to package an invitation to cognitive exercise and action with something of the attractive and playful qualities of boardgames or confectionery, and present concepts and ideas like a 'tray-of-shiny-things' almost tactile and colourful in their design. I'm aiming for this to be conventionally formatted (at least in one form) as a concise document for an academic audience. The key balance to strike is therefor one of incorporating sufficient depth and integrity of information without simply writing an academic paper, and developing an information set that is sufficiently adaptable and flexible to meet the needs of an extremely wide range of subjects and teaching practices without simply developing a series of temporarily amusing or thought-provoking posters.

Original image: Mmmm, choices choices...
 

There needs to be choice and clear labelling (something to suit every taste) and a presentation format that enables ease of interaction or 'dipping in' in the toolkit. Now, I have always been wary of the distinction between 'surface' and 'depth' when used figuratively to imply some form of negative correlation between strength of surface design quality and substance or underlying integrity. Whilst I accept that culture presents innumerable examples of machine airbrushed 'beauty' or auto-tuned musicianship that add fuel to the fire of the 'design-quality-suspicion' debate, there are many more examples of what I like to consider as 'all the way down design' where from the proverbial front-cover-to-the-last-page everything works, fits, leads, connects. The surface communicates the substance and engages.

 

Original image: Your perfect fit is here somewhere...

Information will need to be fit for purpose. There needs to be an obviously high probability of there being something useful to engage the filtering and selection process in the audience initially, but also careful and clear labelling as well as attractive and/or functional presentation to make the information accessible and promote continued engagement. Too much information would be counterproductive and too little of limited purpose or impact. A balance needs to be struck.

So, might chance favour the unprepared mind? I've rambled and, in an intervening shopping trip, gathered a number of photographic examples to illustrate my thinking. It feels like preparation but also like a form of 'deliberate blurring' of aims and objectives. I'm trying to do this creatively and am therefore conscious of wherever tangible crossroads emerge with opportunities for 'approaching things differently'. The first of these, for me, is simply that of how work of this nature often emerges; Why do this on my own when I can invite so many people to contribute their ideas? I can invite the world (that's you) to help.

Any ideas? Help!

Creativity systems and social dynamics

Much of the research on creativity is focused on the individual. Neurological research does provide fascinating glimpses of the complexity of processes involved in the surfacing of insight at a synaptic scale, but we, as human beings, have been social animals and collaborative problem solvers for all of our known evolutionary history and some level of collective endeavor is significant in every act of human creativity. Individual genius remains alluring as a topic of study partly because of the clarity of definition of the subject. More complex is the issue of creativity at social, industrial and, ultimately, human scale. Whilst all creative ideas emerge from specific brains, all creativity requires a social structure for reception and recognition, and some may emerge through shared endeavour. 

Like many, I'm interested in creativity structures, systems and social dynamics. This encompasses areas of research including workforce development, corporate systems, motivation and drive, working space design, data management, communications, linguistics, psychology, cultural studies, sociology, education, politics, and economics. Rather than try to develop some form of 'grand unified theory' of collective human creativity, the aim here is simply to outline some of my thoughts as I move to expand on some areas of research and focus on more defined points.

The computing, internet and portable smart-device revolution has fundamentally redefined the nature of 'interaction' and 'exchange'. The speed of ideas is increasing exponentially and the temptation to equate increasing communication connectivity as analogous to some form of collective neurological integration is strong. From Open Education Resources (OER) to growing campaigns for open access information, never before has more information be available to so many so immediately. The collective power of online communities, pressure groups, and social media networks is perhaps one of the most significant changes in human interaction of the past 10000 years.

The recent Harlem Shake meme is an entertaining example of creative adaptation and speed of cultural communication. Adapted rapidly to different cultural and practical contexts, the humour remains the consistent factor and the change of situation the impetus for further reinvention. These spikes of creative alignment represent an important form of large-scale creative interaction and information exchange. However, whilst the opportunity to interact with millions is clearly of growing significance in any analysis of collaborative or networked creativity, I am mindful of the continued significance of small-scale interactions, of geography, and the need to at least develop some form of framework through which to consider different scales of interaction and cooperation more generally and more consistently.

The graphic above is my first attempt to map a framework for considering different scales of creative interaction and production. Drawing heavily from James Kaufman's ideas about the 'micro-c' to 'Big-C' spectrum, and Margaret Boden's work on levels of creativity, the aim is to frame thinking rather than represent reality. Whilst I'm already beginning to consider more nuanced categories between 'Individual' and 'Industrial' (family unit/parental instruction, informal associations, amateurism, semi-professionalism, educational instruction, training and simulation), I think this basic framework does suffice in clarifying the underlying scales of creative interaction for analytical purposes:

1. Individual creativity I define as that emerging primarily from individuals. Recognising the need for groups to identify and validate creative ideas, the distinction here is one of creativity emerging through lone working rather than explicitly collaborative or through group structures. This level would encompass everything from the creativity of itinerant and idiosyncratic garden shed inventors, composers and artists, to the physical creativity of rope-less climbers.
2. Group creativity refers to any collaborative interaction between more that two people. This encompasses many small-scale organisational, discipline-based, and ensemble creativity from collaborative song writing partnerships to lab-based team scientific research. Limits of collaborative scale are slightly difficult to determine in precise terms but I consider the upper end of 'group' to relate to subcultural level but the primary focus to be smaller teams.
3. Industrial level creativity relates to large-scale systems-based organisations with defined professional roles, deliberative and command structures. Within a defined industrial sector with international recognition, technology corporations such as IBM or Toshiba as well as educational institutions and political systems would characterise context for 'Industrial' level creativity.
4. Cultural creativity can be considered as both international and intra-national in scale. Relating both to diaspora and geographically concentrated groups, incorporating a wide range of cultural institutions, social practices and conventions, 'cultural' creativity relates to processes including fashion, language, architecture, religion and ideology.
   
5. Global creativity is perhaps the most complex scale of creativity to specify. It may be arguable that no truly collective act of creativity has yet emerged. Correspondingly, it is arguable that all acts of human creativity, of all scales, are the direct consequence of collective knowledge and understanding. Whilst some isolated human communities still remain in parts of South America, the vast majority of human creativity emerges through fully social structures and processes.
   

The issue of scale may require thinking differently about the interactions between different levels in different contexts. The truth is that we all operate across a range of different social structures and apply our creativity in an array of situations and environments. In any given day we can move rapidly from the creativity of play with children, to professional creativity in the workplace, and back to personal creativity in art or research, with boundaries often clearly marked by the closing of doors and periods of movement, but often blurred by communication technology and wandering minds.

I am interested to explore how it is that we are socially creative. Any musician in a band will testify to the tensions and electrifying possibilities of focused group collaboration and creative interaction. Most poets have reveled in isolation and introspection with sharing ideas as the projected outcome. Tech companies the world over reveal the creative potential of larger more coordinated groups. Creativity occurs at different scales of human interaction and in different ways for different people.

This blog will be updated...

Creative stress and inventiveness under pressure (reflections on the Format Festival multimedia installation)

I like being busy. I'd much rather swim than go fishing, or drive than be driven. I can even find myself 'observing' energetically. I'm much happier doing something than nothing. But sometimes things can become so busy, frenetic, and fragmented, that you almost feel like you're watching yourself live than actively participating in any meaningful sense. Like staring out of the train window, the horizon (your 'life') appears still, whilst pace increases and clarity reduces towards the foreground (the 'stuff' you're actually doing). Beyond a certain conceptual and practical frame rate things become blurred.

As a father, husband, academic, musician, composer, artist, researcher, teacher, tutor, author, blogger/tweeter, cricket fan, film buff, avid reader, campaigner, traveller, cook, cleaner, daydreamer, mender of machines and broken cats, presenter, publisher, performer, (extends in progressively smaller print into the distance...), I very rarely have opportunities for boredom. I claim no monopoly on busyness or pressure though. I recognise that increasing working hours, work-related stress and psychological illness are serious concerns for many, in most parts of the world, and that most human beings face far greater and more basic challenges of survival than I will (hopefully) ever experience. These are serious creativity topics but beyond the scope of this particular blog entry. I'm more concerned here with exploring how pressure and stress impact creativity, in my experience.

At the time of writing this blog entry, I have recently completed a performance installation for the opening conference of the Format International Photography Festival in Derby (http://www.formatfestival.com). Themed around the festival, Factory is a two hour event involving large-scale video projection, 16-speaker ambisonic sound array, live electroacoustic piano and theatrical performance elements. Developed collaboratively with my colleague and collaborative partner Michael Brown in our 'PRISM' guise, the work was developed during a frenetic period of university work. Despite this, Factory became an extremely cohesive and rich creative project (in my opinion--Youtube clips will be published after the performance). My question is, have I/we been creative despite great pressure on time and space? Or have I/we been creative because of these constraints?

The Format International Photography festival is one of the cultural highlights of Derby's calendar. Drawing the world's best photographers and visitors from around the world, the event has become a major cultural event for the city. Launched this year on March 8th, we were commissioned to produce a performance event to open the festival at the reception for the festival conference. The festival theme being 'the factory' (Derby's 'Silk Mill' being the world's oldest factory and the cradle of the industrial revolution), we had the opportunity and permission to explore and to use amazing photographs by exhibitors. We worked in our PRISM way (not a secret but not really necessary to describe in detail here), and developed a sonic, videographic, image-based, and performance elements in response to the images and broader theme. We distorted, manipulated, animated, sonified, and creatively responded to the ideas of the photographs and to each other.

Often overlooked, we were, of course, dependent on the technical, logistical, and creative input of others. We enjoyed the excellent technical support of our sound, lighting and computer technicians, the creative input of our excellent Sound, Light and Live Event Technology students (http://www.derby.ac.uk/courses/sound-light-and-live-event-technology-bsc-hons/), and amazing support from academic colleagues. A great big thanks to Bruce Wiggins (http://tinyurl.com/d8z7d2a) for his ambisonic plugins and surround-sound know-how, Adam Hill for organising and supporting his excellent student team, and to Mark, Richard, Ray, Jason, and Jayne, for helping to move things, put things in the right place, and make sure there wasn't someone else in the place).

We provided terrible specifications guidance in every case (because we didn't know what we were doing and only completed the creative process minutes before the performance event) and yet several teams responded immediately and instinctively to the challenge. At set up we started to project the animation component, play back some ambisonic sound textures through the surround-sound array, and rehearse some of the performance elements (prepared piano with marbles, percussion equipment and composed elements). The team responded in highly creative ways and 'followed our lead' in inventive ways. Things were 'moved about', lighting colours were changed, bits of 'stuff' were found for putting one thing on top of another, other 'things' were sourced from unusual sources and strange places. And then, it was ready.

The event itself was well received. We certainly enjoyed the performance and were happy with the end results. Certain things didn't work as anticipated, many things changed, and certain discoveries and unanticipated processes emerged in real-time. Despite tight deadlines and infinite distractions, something creative emerged.

This wasn't entirely 'despite' the lack of time. Much was 'because' of the pressure. As with many university students working on assignments, we had to work late into the night, in fragmentary ways, and to decide quickly, work quickly and 'guess' spontaneously when certain 'next steps' were not clear. Whilst this frequently led to the repetition of developed (fall-back) patterns, there were numerous occasions both when context, stimulus, and urgency led to inauguration of new ideas and end results. We haven't really had the time to reflect properly on whether this was as good as it could have been, but we're certain it's something that could otherwise not have been.

Whilst I do like the old adage--"Needs driven creativity grows flowers, discover led creativity grows trees"--and think James Kaufman's little-c/Big-C/Pro-C module of creativity is extremely useful in defining context to creativity, I think the issue of what constitutes 'favorable circumstances' for creative insight might be a rich area for further research.

From the incredible engineering creativity of the Apollo 13 crew (for example), to the general issue of creativity in military combat and human survival, there are numerous examples of great innovation 'under fire'. It may that stress, pressure, distraction, and other limitations can be generally considered unfavorable for creativity to emerge, but what if extreme pressures, paucity of resources or heightened stress lead to creativity in different ways?

I suspect that 'open creativity' (such as when I decide to sit down and compose some music during a holiday break) can produce creative insight moments when I am able to appreciate the moment, reflect immediately, and 'bank' the experience as further evidence for the need for reduced stress to promote creativity. The 'creative insight in the shower' meme is also explainable for this reason; Don't we just 'feel' more creative when we're in 'down time' because we have the time to notice?

The invention of "focket" |fʌk ɪt|, childhood and the creativity of innocence and naivety

This is a story about a garden, parental difficulty, and how a child invented a new sport in a spontaneous moment of partial naivety.

The worst cricket pitch in the UK?

Last summer I was playing in the garden with my eldest daughter (above). She had just turned 7 years old. We were playing cricket and taking turns to bat and bowl on an admittedly terrible wicket (slope, long grass, interfering cats). She was beginning to get into her stride batting when she completely misjudged a delivery, swiped her bat through nothing, and then kicked the plastic ball straight up in the air. Before even reaching the top of its arc she shouted "Fuck it!" and grinned at me. What!? Er...?

I was stunned. Where had she picked this sort of language up? Who has she heard saying this? I composed myself, stared straight at her (adopting a serious-but-quizzical expression) and said, "I beg your pardon young lady?" She was unphased and even mildly disappointed at my apparent lack of insight or imagination; "You know? 'Foo-cket', it's a cross between football and cricket."

I fell over laughing without any acceptable way of explaining quite why I found this such a relief and so amusing.

Now clearly, 'Foo-cket' would probably never take off in reasonable way for the obvious reasons (consider the complaints to the BBC about language used during radio coverage alone). The invention of this combination or hybrid sport did, however, involve approximately 0.4 seconds deliberation, emerged spontaneously entirely out of thinking context and activity (we were doing sport and being 'physical' not playing 'word games' at the time-she wasn't trying to invent new sports), and revealed something quite fascinating, to me, about human creativity and learning.

Firstly, part of my daughter's thinking (her subconscious) was obviously busy playing with descriptors and language related to her activities whilst she was otherwise apparently entirely engrossed in hand-eye-coordination and application of specific physical skills and techniques. Part of her wasn't thinking about what she was doing but rather on how these processes might be described or how they could be conceptualised. She was 'riffing' with concepts and ideas and her subconscious threw an idea to her conscious thinking that was so clear that it found occasion to be vocalised and become a shred thought. She innovated and communicated spontaneously, without 'attempted thought'.

Secondly, the humour inherent in this moment of 'spontaneous neologism' was only apparent to me at the time (I deliberately downplayed the incident with my daughter in case she encouraged her classmates to establish "fuck it" as the favourite playground game) and to 'adults' (or 'grown ups') in re-telling. The very basis of what is funny (this plausible sport name sounds the same as something you are generally not culturally supported in shouting at your parent at the age of 7), was not a factor in my daughter's thinking at the moment of creation (thankfully).

Finally, give that perhaps my favourite explanation of how to be creative is 'combine everything you know with everything you know', this moment insight suddenly made me realise that this is exactly what children can only do from an early age. That is what conscious experience is through early stages of development. It's only when consciousness becomes more 'developed' that it becomes more capable of compartmentalisation and the cognitive 'switching off' of particular neural pathways when 'focused' thinking or activity is required (See George Land -- 'Breakpoint and Beyond', 1998, for more detailed insight into the impact of formal education on divergent thinking capability).

I like think that this anecdote demonstrates that:

• Creativity can emerge without conscious effort.
• Creativity can sometimes be invisible to the originator (require external recognition).
• Creativity can require collaboration to realise potential.
• It is possible for a 7-year-old child to be more creative with ideas than an internationally published creativity researcher when playing cricket.

I realise that at any given moment I am getting progressively better at screening out more and more of what I know as I 'concentrate' and 'focus'. I think of this as (perhaps optimistically) as a product of sophistication and complexity rather than an inevitable indication of cognitive decline, but nevertheless recognise this as something to guard against, resist and counter. The ability to both cultivate subconscious association and 'play', and to allow ideas to 'reach the surface' and be shared is hugely important.

Whenever you struggle to generate the ideas you need just think 'Fuck It'. You might just find your subconscious has the answers.