About
Our mission at Leading for Creative Thinking is to bring together and enable educational leaders to foster a culture that explicitly develops the creativity of both staff and students.
Creativity is crucial. Nurturing creative thinking skills equips leaders to be agile, teachers to flourish and pupils to thrive in an ever-changing world.
To do this well, committed creative leadership is vital.
This leadership approach sets an agenda for change and seeks to enable system, school and teacher leaders to cultivate creative thinking, through the development of cultures, structures and practices, and embodying the ‘creative habits of mind’.
Discover the untapped potential within your school and classroom.
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The Creative Habits of Mind
The model of creativity and creative thinking that underpins Leading for Creative Thinking focuses on five key creative habits of mind - collaborative, disciplined, imaginative, inquisitive and persistent.
This framework supports you as school leaders to understand what habits to focus on as you look to develop the creativity of your pupils and staff.
10 Key Actions
From research undertaken we know that there are ten key actions that effective creative leaders undertake. All the activities on the website and in the playbook relate to one of these ten. They are:
- The Change Process
- Develop Leaders
- Change the Culture
- Rethink Structures
- Develop a Creative Curriculum
- Rethink Pedagogy
- Track Progression in Creativity
- Ensure Professional Learning
- Collaborate with External Partners
- Reflect and Evaluate
The Leading for Creative Thinking Partnership
Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) is an award-winning international foundation dedicated to unlocking the creative potential of educators, young people and children through sustainable change in teaching and learning. CCE is currently supporting programmes in England Ireland, Norway, Hungary, Pakistan and Thailand and has an international network formed from previous projects in Australia, Scotland, Wales, Romania, the Czech Republic, Chile and elsewhere. CCE is led by Nia Richards who has been supporting professional learning in creativity since 2015. A classroom teacher for 13 years in secondary and further education, Nia was the Regional Lead for the Welsh Government and Arts Council of Wales national Creative Learning programme and has an MA in Practitioner Research.
Arts Council of Wales launched the Creative learning through the arts programme in 2015. They have used the five Creative Habits of Mind model to place creativity at the heart of the curriculum through the Lead Creative Schools strand, reaching over seven hundred settings to date. Sian James manages the national Creative Learning programme for Arts Council of Wales supporting over 700 schools and their teachers to explore innovative pedagogy and prepare for the introduction of a new expansive curriculum.
The Centre for Real-World Learning (CRL) at the University of Winchester is an acclaimed applied research group focusing on understanding the dispositions for learning which enable people to thrive in life. The five Creative Habits model of learning they developed is widely used in secondary and primary schools across the world. CRL is led by Professor Bill Lucas. A prolific researcher, writer and educational thought-leader, Bill is co-founder of Rethinking Assessment, chair of the Global Institute of Creative Thinking’s advisory board, co-chair of the advisory board of the PISA 2022 Test of Creative Thinking and co-author of the first Durham Commission Report on Creativity and Education. Dr Ellen Spencer is has spent over a decade researching creativity and creative leadership, co-authoring books and reports with Bill which combine conceptual development with a strongly practical focus aimed at advancing practice in classrooms and more widely.
We are also benefiting from the expertise of Professor Louise Stoll, an international consultant and Emeritus Professor of Professional Learning at the UCL Centre for Educational Leadership. Louise’s research and development activity focuses on how schools and systems create capacity for learning and she has collaborated with the OECD on several initiatives, including focusing on the leadership of Innovative Learning Environments, and Schools as Learning Organisations.
Finally, the Team would like to acknowledge support from The Mercers Company.
