Whether we are born with it, or achieve it through inspiration and hard work, creativity is one of life’s great gifts. It is also a really important asset in education, and that is the subject of this week’s Learning World.
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We start with a look at a very special school of the arts in Cambodia. It was set up to help orphans deal with the trauma of Khmer Rouge atrocities and 35 years on, its healing work continues.
Pupils at the school come from among the most deprived communities in Cambodian. They are taught music and visual arts, but performance arts are the most popular.
Today 1,300 children attend the school and there are also projects to protect orphans, victims of human trafficking and abused children.
Circus arts are traditional in Cambodia and at the school they are also a form of therapy.
In Iceland creativity is so highly valued they have incorporated it into the national curriculum. The Innovation Education project believes all youngsters have talents that can be tapped into, to encourage initiative and strengthen self image.
The Innovation Education project has been part of Iceland’s national curriculum for 20 years. The main concept is to teach children a certain approach; to observe their environment and to identify the needs.
The idea is that they should be able to find solutions, present them, describe them, and make drawings and models, in the same way that, say, an inventor works.
The project believes that everyone is creative and all ideas are valid. It doesn’t matter whether the idea is immediately successful or not – every proposal has value and is merely waiting to become a reality.