Creative learning has huge benefits for individuals and society in terms of wellbeing, employability and skills development.


Creative Learning Academy in EYNCRIN provides lifelong learning opportunities that apply to a range of settings – anywhere where learning takes place – in and out of formal education. We are committed to increasing the quantity and quality of opportunities for young people to develop their full potential though the arts and creativity. We encourage youth organisations to clarify and develop the reach, relevance and power of learning opportunities they plan and deliver within and outwith, their organisations.

EYNCRIN`s approach to Creative Learning is as follows:

creative learning takes place when arts and cultural activity leads intentionally to the development of understanding, knowledge and skills.

Our Creative Learning activities cover:


  • Learning in an artform; developing the attributes, skills and techniques that will lead to increased mastery of that artform.
  • Learning through an artform; using the attributes, skills and techniques of an artform to engage and develop learners, primarily in another subject area.
  • Developing the creativity skills of learners - open minded, constructively inquisitive, able to harness imagination, able to identify and solve problems) and developing creative approaches to learning.


The reference to understanding, knowledge and skills is deliberately broad. Skills in an artform, creativity skills or personal development (softer) skills are equally important. It is for the organisation or practitioner to identify what they are intending to develop.

BETWEEN CREATIVITY AND CREATIVE LEARNING

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Creativity is…

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  • The ability to create something out of thin air. There’s a problem? A creative person can figure out the solutions by successfully plugging in unique and useful solutions for each challenge.
  • The ability to see both available solutions and solutions that do not yet exist to cater to each individual. Whether it’s using microlearning for learners on the go or adaptive learning for those that are fast on their feet, creativity means knowing how to make sure each learner gets the experience they need.
  • The ability to focus on the learner; not just the actual learning. Creativity is required to see beyond what needs to be done to decide the how.


Creative learning is…


  • Providing a personal learning environment for each learner and the way for an entire organization to think about training and workplace education.
  • Giving learners the opportunity to make decisions–and creating a space in which they feel comfortable about taking risks and seeing how their choices and actions affect outcomes.
  • Creating a learning path where learners are actively involved and not just passive participants. Learning on their own time, prescribing their own learning, and creating their own paths mean learners are stepping outside the typical bounds of training for creative learning opportunities.
  • Enjoying a number of different learning methods, from microlearning to gamification, as a way to increase overall learner engagement.


Creativity as a process

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  • There are different models that describe the creativity process. 
  • Petty splits the creativity process into six phases:
  • Inspiration: In which you research and generate many ideas
  • Clarification: In which you focus on your goals
  • Evaluation: In which you review your work and learn from it
  • Distillation: In which you decide which of your ideas to work on
  • Incubation: In which you leave the work alone
  • Perspiration: In which you work determined on your best ideas


The creative person
A focus on the nature of the creative person considers more general intellectual habits, such as openness, levels of ideation, autonomy, expertise, exploratory behaviour and so on. As far as the creative person is concerned, researches have studied the individual from a multitude of perspectives: so, two individuals can be creative but in different styles. The style of creativity measures the way in which creativity manifests itself (“How creative you are?” / “How does your creativity manifests itself?”) whilst the level of creativity measures the capacity to create (“In which degree are you creative?”).
Another important aspect of a creative individual is its personality. We are all unique and different in a way, but not all of us can get an advantage of it. We should be able to regard our potentials as resources that we can build on – especially in the areas we are effective. Exploiting these unique potentials of the personality we can acquire a stable self-esteem. Self-confidence is – on the other hand – a good basis for express novel associations and ideas, thus being creative.

 Group creativity
One of the best ways to generate ideas is to ask a team to use known creativity techniques to derive solutions that make the best out of the human creative potential. Groups of different sizes and various professional profiles have a better chance of solving a problem than individuals do. This makes it especially important to take care of the group composition. The more diverse it is, the more it triggers divergent thinking.

The creative environment
A focus on place considers the best circumstances in which creativity flourishes, including degrees of autonomy, access to resources and the nature of gatekeepers. A creative environment is one where people feel at ease expressing their ideas and where positive backing is given in the development of those ideas.

 How to enhance creativity?
Nickerson  provides a summary of the various creativity techniques that have been proposed to foster creativity. These include approaches that have been developed by both academia and industry:


  • • Establishing purpose and intention
  • • Building basic skills
  • • Encouraging acquisitions of domain-specific knowledge
  • • Stimulating and rewarding curiosity and exploration
  • • Building motivation, especially internal motivation
  • • Encouraging confidence and a willingness to take risks
  • • Focusing on mastery and self-competition
  • • Promoting supportable beliefs about creativity
  • • Providing opportunities for choice and discovery
  • • Developing self-management (metacognitive skills)
  • • Teaching techniques and strategies for facilitating creative performance
  • • Providing balance