Welcome to the Discovery Tent

Hello and Welcome from The Brave Team

The Creative Bravery Festival Brave Team warmly welcome you to join them to launch the start of the festival and hear a bit about the journey to getting here!

It’s been an amazing, frustrating, awe-inspiring, fun, panic-inducing journey to get here but we, and many others have worked collectively to bring to an amazing week of discoveries and bonfires to ignite your imagination. Hear more about the daily challenges and how to make the most of the Creative Bravery Festival.

Education is at the tipping point of change in the UK and globally. Systems and methods that were  ripe for change for decades were suddenly up-ended by the Covid-19 pandemic and will never go back in the box the same way they came out.

Meet Alex Bell, global ambassador of the year for Finnish-based global education innovation catalyst, the NGO HundrED.org.

Alex and his joint lead ambassador for the UK, Justin Blake, share why education innovation is one of the best ways to get young people out of this crisis and why they share the stage with some of the world’s most exciting education innovators all based in the UK.

Visit our website: http://hundred.org

Scotland’s Enterprising Schools host another in our popular series of #Entercasts. “What’s an Entercast?” We hear you cry! It’s an inspiring live webcast, open to all with an interest in enterprise education, designed to share examples of creative enterprise in education and enable attendees to ask questions, share ideas, reflect on current practice and leave with the courage to effect positive change.

In short, Entercast stands for Enter[prise] + ca[se] + st[udy].

Attendees will also be invited to join our growing community to access free resources, online professional development, and support.

We want to share stories of innovative and inspiring schools and partners, all of whom are embedding enterprise to equip our young people for success in an increasingly uncertain future. We look at how Enterprise can be used FOR education; from 3 year olds who can haggle a bargain to primary pupils trying out virtual reality work experience, and not forgetting the school leavers who could buy and sell their granny. This is a whistle-stop tour of how enterprise can be used as a pedagogy to enhance the curriculum and the life chances of our young people.

In this session we explore Scotland’s history and heritage through immersive digital experiences in Minecraft. From Iron Age Perthshire, to the exodus from St Kilda.

From a Victorian house fire, to Glasgow in 1911, we show how educators and parents can bring history to life by putting children inside the places and times we can no longer reach in real life. Food, clothing, culture, currency, language, religion, artifacts, and more, all wrapped up in stories in which the players are the protagonists.

In a world where standing out is more difficult than ever, how can you make sure your message is noticed and not ignored?

By making the same choices as everyone else, you become trapped. If you always make the ‘right’ decision, the safe decision, the one most people make, you will be the same as everyone else. We’ll look at how thinking differently delivers better results.

Learning to think differently will free up your mind and deliver results you can only dream of.

On the surface, it seems like a crazy thing to do. Once you look at it, it’s the only sensible way to think.

So you’ve heard of TED talks but you haven’t heard of Xtalks. We’re here to put that straight.

Xtalks co-founder, Alex Bell, and Hector Grimaldo from one of Xtalks’ partner schools in Vietnam, talks about the importance of youth voice being heard. Especially those voices not often given a seat at the global table.

Xtalks, founded in Malawi in 2017 was named as one of the top 100 education innovations in the world for 2020 in Forbes magazine.

It has since gone on to change the lives of countless teens from Malawi to Venezuela, to Barbados and scores of others around the world where lived experience, the authentic wisdom of youth and a call to action are enough to capture the imagination of audiences globally. All captured on hand held camera phones.

In this conversation with Maggie O’Neill, Karen Lawson and Jerry O’Neill, we will explore why walking is fundamental to our way of being: a restorative space for conversations; a connection to the landscape and history; but also an opportunity for transforming learning. 

The walking classroom provides a rich opportunity to disrupt the traditional classroom, offering  embodied, relational and reflective processes that can create a different, and even dissonant, learning and teaching experience.   The critically-infused knowledge that can emerge may just be the catalyst for the kind of perspective shifts needed for transforming education.

We wondered what would happen if pupils from schools, colleges and universities worked on the same project? Can we share our resources and insights as colleagues and give pupils an opportunity to contextualise their learning. Introducing – the Van of Dreams Project. The brief ; A community has been gifted a campervan. Who is that community? How can it be re-interpreted to benefit that community?

In this presentation you will hear from both staff and pupils who are working on this inspiring project.

It’s creatively brave because….The Van of Dreams encourages us all to come together as a community and share our knowledge. We believe this brave and creative project will shine a light on what’s possible when we realise that collaboration is essential for our survival.

Visit the website: https://daydreambelievers.co.uk/

“Interdisciplinary Learning: ambitious learning for an increasingly ‘complex world” is a thought paper from Education Scotland and NoTosh. It is the culmination of a series of co-design events with leaders across Scottish Education including schools, universities and policy makers. The paper reflects the energy and passion for IDL and opens up conversations that challenge educators to be bold and creatively brave.

Join Jenny Watson and Julia Fenby to explore the following question – How can we create the spaces, interactions and experiences to allow Interdisciplinary Learning to flourish and provide children and young people with the knowledge and skills to meet the challenges of an uncertain future?

It’s creatively brave because the world we are living in is becoming increasingly complex. This can be seen in our personal lives, in our business world and in public affairs. Interdisciplinary learning is one of the corner stones of our Curriculum for Excellence but its aspirations have not been fully realised. To do so, Creative Bravery is required – in curriculum design, timetabling and teaching and learning. We need to be collaborative and forward thinking to ensure our children and young people have experiences that enhance their knowledge, skills and wellbeing. We need to work with partners and be bold to actively engage our children and young people in learning that is shaped by their motivations, realises their ambition and embraces opportunities that build confidence.

The thought paper can be found on this link – https://education.gov.scot/improvement/learning-resources/fresh-approaches-to-interdisciplinary-learning/

Alison Watson is a land surveyor and the founder and Chief Executive of social business and education consultancy, Class Of Your Own. She created the innovative “Design Engineer Construct!” (DEC) accredited learning programme and suite of qualifications for secondary school students age 11-18, supported by some of the UK’s leading companies, professional bodies and universities. 

Alison will discuss her mission to ‘Educate the Future of Construction’, providing young people with genuine local and global STEAM learning opportunities embedded in a truly modern, technology-focused curriculum.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the single biggest celebration of arts and culture on the planet. For three weeks in August, the city houses an explosion of creative energy. There is a well-known adage that if empathy is a muscle, then theatre can be the gym.

In this session we’ll explore how we can collectively reframe the experience of the Fringe Festival as one of exploration and experimentation and how in doing so we may empower young people as cultural citizens, confident in articulating their 5 star emotional response to the world around them, and building emotional resilience.

In 2020 the Edinburgh Festival Fringe did not take place for the first time in over 70 years. When looking to the future, we want to be creatively brave in better articulating the value and values of the Festival Fringe is for those who engage as audience and artists, with a focus on young people. We recognise when Arts/Culture and Education work collaboratively this leads to transformative experiences. We want to work with Education partners to identify how engaging in Festival environments can help build an emotional response toolkit and what this can cultivate in young people and society.

Photographer credit is David Monteith-Hodge

In this session, we will explore learning and teaching in huge digital toyboxes designed in Minecraft, in which players experience a constant mix of curriculum subjects through the lens of a place or narrative.

Mathematics, history and engineering with Vikings, the science and geography of Pompeii, literacy with WWI. Learning shouldn’t be confined to one subject at a time. We are not teachers of Maths, or teachers of science…we are teachers of children and our chosen subjects are only part of a much wider learning story. Minecraft curriculum toyboxes facilitate the telling of that story.

This is a session that shows students how to analyse creative work and what makes good work great. This an interactive session (with the option for people to use the chat function and polls).

We’ll look through a series of winning work from D&AD (that shows some brave creativity!) and assess what makes it standout, asking the audience to think about what the work means to them. We’ll talk through the importance of remembering who your audience is, how to analyse work, and the importance of brave creative work.

This session focuses on:

– How to think about what your audience likes vs. what you like, and how these can be very different things

– How to assess what good work really means and, in turn, help you to evaluate your own creativity and be braver with your ideas

– Exposes the audience to some brave work produced in the commercial creative industry

Bold, brave and braw! Collaborating locally and globally with Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning. Health & well-being, climate change, gender equality, resilience… global challenges need global solutions.

And right now, across the planet, schools are collaborating locally and internationally on innovative ideas and creative solutions to the big issues that shape our world with support from Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning (CCGL).
CCGL operates across the UK and in over 30 other countries: offering funding, free support, resources and professional learning to help learners and educators develop and enhance the skills, values, knowledge and approaches needed to thrive on our increasingly interdependent planet.
CCGL is about being bold, brave… and braw! Join us to hear more – and begin your own Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning journey.

A workshop for people who want to work toward more participation and equity in education by centering those who are most often excluded from its design.

Design Justice is a framework and set of principles for creating more equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of the decisions we make.

Introducing the topic of climate change, carbon emissions and how to build more sustainably. Setting a project task for P6 and P7 pupils to design their future sustainable new home.

Our future new housing needs to be low carbon. Schools will be asked to submit their designs by end of March 2021 and will be uploaded to an online exhibition Gallery.

The brief for this project is available to download in the Creative Toolshed. You will find it under documents.

‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’ Sir Ken Robinson, author of ‘Out of Our Minds’, led national and international projects on creative and cultural education across the world, unlocking and igniting the creative energy of people and organisations.

Sadly he passed away on August 21st this year. As festival organizers we are devasted by this loss as we all have been greatly inspired by his thinking. Two close friends of Sir Ken Robinson, Susan McCalmont and Peter Gamwell, will share some of their memories and invite you to join them in a tribute to this inspiring and creatively brave man.’

On the Outside is a 42 minute film that is the outcome of a participatory film project involving four women serving sentences in HM Prison Polmont, Scotland.

Scripts were developed that communicated the women’s stories using their exact spoken words and individual narratives were recounted by actors and made in to a film, giving introspective accounts of the women’s lives, while challenging preconceived notions of the label ‘prisoner’.
The event will involve screening one of the four chapters of the film followed by a Q&A with the film director. The complete film will be made available to participants of the event.

The film can be previewed here:
Link: https://vimeo.com/paulgray/ontheoutside
password: VisualLetters18″

How, and the assumptions underpinning what, we learn are more crucial than ever.  But what should be the guiding star(s) that influence and shape this? 

We will introduce you to the ethics and principles used in Permaculture and discuss how they might be a creatively brave framework for learning.

Powerful learning experiences do not occur in isolation. They occur within and throughout our communities, society, and the world writ large. Why then, have we created an education system that aims to isolate learning—and those who support it (e.g. teachers)—to a single school building, classroom, or household?

What if we leveraged every asset within our communities to provide unlimited learning opportunities for every single child, regardless of background or circumstance?

Join Kelly Young (Education Reimagined), Timothy Jones (#HipHopEd), Joe Hobot (American Indian OIC), and Josh Schacter (CommunityShare) as they discuss why leveraging community assets is a critical component in transforming education during and long after the COVID-19 pandemic—and how to do it in your community.

We will be using creativity to work through what ever is going on in your head. This isn’t about being great at art but rather the thinking process or journey you go through as you make some art.

Starting with a poem or picture, to get ideas going, we’ll make something with whatever materials you have to hand. We’ll then chat in groups about what we’ve made, before ending in a group again to share any ideas or inspirations.
Bring old newspapers, catalogues, magazines, paper, pens, pencils, paint, playdough, clay, glue, scissors or anything that takes your fancy but if all you have is a bit of paper & pen that’s just fine.

AcesAyrshire will host a panel discussion around raising awareness of ACES. We are inviting one keynote speaker to the panel.

We are a grassroots movement who established around 18 months ago and are part of a growing movement across Scotland of “agents of change”.

Visit our website here: https://acesayrshire.co.uk/

This one-hour online event is a space for anyone to explore their idea – no matter how tiny and vulnerable – and to offer their generative attention to the ideas of others.

Facilitated in a Thinking Environment, this is an easeful, efficient, disciplined space where even strangers feel safe together.
You don’t have to be from further education, or even education. You and your thinking are most welcome.

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

In this session we are joined by digital alchemist Adam Clarke as we explore how Minecraft can be used to facilitate deep cultural and artistic exploration.

From digital worlds that allow players to step inside and explore famous paintings, to huge temples created in both Minecraft and real life as an emotional release for grief and hurt and anger, burned simultaneausly as a ritual of spiritual communion between warring cultures. Putting Minecraft at the heart of artisitic expression, Adam has created some of the most profound, beautiful, and challenging experiences for children and adults worldwide.

Drawing from our own experiences and the inspiration of people like Brené Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, Krisnamurti and Rumi, we invite you to explore the inner work that unlocks our creativity and bravery.

Reflecting on the barriers that can stifle creative bravery and the choices that open this up, we’ll get curious about what steps we might take to invite more creative bravery into our work, and stay with it when it has arrived. This is an experiential session – bring paper, pens, an open mind and a willingness to share your own creative bravery. All are welcome.

An expression that refers to improvisation based on unpreparedness, without plans; you don’t know what you’re doing; things might work out but more likely not. It is linked to being unorganised, lazy and not recommended in learning environments.

Andrea Tenger will share what she has heard from educators winging it in Australia and challenge this thinking.

The involvement of students in curriculum design for Higher and Further Education presents exciting opportunities; but we also want to explore the limits of this approach.

What are the pay-offs, what are the barriers, and what are the implications for both students and staff? The campfire will discuss these and other relevant issues using, of course, a coproduction approach!

“The greatest danger facing us is ourselves, and irrational fear of the unknown. There is no such thing as the unknown. Only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.” James T Kirk

In this session, Audrey Cumberford – Principal of Edinburgh College and Simon Hewitt – Principal of Dundee and Angus College, will explore how COVID has put a spotlight on how, as educators, we must adapt, be innovative and more creative.

The likelihood of a global pandemic has been known for many years, fuelled by globalisation, international travel, urbanisation and climate change. Over a billion students worldwide have been unable to go to school, to college, to university, since March this year. As educators we also know we need to rethink how we educate future generations. COVID may well be the disruption we needed to accelerate and sharpen our focus on rethinking how we educate, re thinking what we need to teach and what we are preparing our students for. In thinking about the importance of planning for the future, adapting and transforming how we do things the management guru Peter Drucker was once asked “what is the worst mistake you could make?” His response – “to be prematurely right.”

Following the huge success of the Daydream Believers project it became apparent from teachers and learners that there was an appetite for a formal qualification in Creative Thinking based around the Daydream Resources.

We would like to present our plans for a Level 6 qualification in Creative Thinking to be offered in schools across Scotland and invite input from learners, teachers, professionals and all interested parties to help us shape this innovation.

Jody Drezner Alperin and Vicky Finney Crouch from Off The Page education have created a stage adaptation of Jason Reynolds’ and Brendan Kiely’s All American Boys.

The video and script are now available as a resource to confront systemic racism, police brutality, and its impact on young people across this country.

Join Jody, Vicky and some members of the cast for a Q&A. https://www.offthepageeducation.org

This session will explore how a real-world context and empowered students can be transformational for learning, engagement and outcomes for all.

The Youth and Philanthropy Initiative is the largest independent initiative delivered through the Scottish curriculum. Practitioners use it as a platform to support innovative approaches to learning and teaching.

Visit their website: https://ypiscotland.org.uk/

This is Our Chance is a free virtual film festival about the intersection of Race, Education, and Youth Empowerment taking place October 6-27. The COVID-19 pandemic has up-ended the regular school experience for nearly 2 billion young people worldwide.

At the same time, communities are confronting the insidious realities of systemic racism and grappling with how it shows up in schools. In the Creative Bravery Discovery tent, This Is Our Chance organizers will share insights about the films, the festival, and the power of storytelling to get people jazzed about the upcoming event.

Visit their website: https://our-chance.com/

My event is a discussion of the following:
1. How conceptions of childhood “innocence” silence and erase LGBTQ+ representation in Early Learning and Childcare / Pre-School settings.

2. Identitfying, disrputing and challenging heteronormativity in ELC settings.
3. How early learning practitioners position heterosexuality and gender conformity as the normative standard in practice and ways to tackle this.
4. How socio-political legislation such as Section 28 continues to silence and stigmatise despite its repeal 20 years ago.

SPIT IT OUT is a collection of people who aim to build connections and provide a platform for discussions about trauma, mental health, sex positivity, and healing though creativity.

We wish to spread awareness of our project through a variety of art forms and creative events with live performances to challenge people’s perceptions about sex and consent as a means to get people talking.

At this event you will meet three performers, choosing a song / poem and explaining why they decided to use creativity to heal. 

Strategies of how ‘musical breathing’ can engage our bodies and minds to inspire and sustain our creative practices will be explored in this interactive learning session. 

You will be able to connect both to yourself and to a global audience through ‘Connections through Music’, a collaborative initiative designed by the TEWV Foundation NHS, Music Mind Spirit Trust and X-System to promote feelings of wellbeing and connectedness through music and science. Prof Nigel Osborne, Dr Chika Robertson, Dr Angela Kennedy, Dr Paras Patel and inspirational young musicians will lead us through a refreshing, relaxing and rejuvenating musical journey at the close of day.

Photo by Valeriia Bugaiova on Unsplash

In this session we explore the the use of Minecraft as a defining tool in facilitating subject we traditionally find difficult to teach.

Bullying, religious tolerance and celebration, gender equality, social equity, democracy, human rights, climate change, the refugee crisis, and more, all brought to life through serious play in a beautifully realised, creative, collaborative, digital space. Students access a safe, open space of experimentation, conversation, healthy debate, informed decision making, peer and self-assessment and reflection. This session will focus on the Refugee Crisis Minecraft experience as an example of how we can address the challenging issues of our time in ways we never before thought possible for our children, who in turn become the engineers of solutions and change.

New Practice are an architecture practice based in Glasgow. We work hard to connect people with the decision making processes that underpin their lived experience. Central to our practice is a commitment to engaging young people with the built environment.

It is important to us that our processes offer reciprocal and clear value to all participants – that we gain an insight into their experiences and ideas, and that in turn they gain skills and knowledge. Presenting case studies from three recent digital engagement projects, our interactive workshop offers a space to discuss educational opportunities in public engagement, and taking creative risks in the time of Covid-19.

This session will run through examples of creative thinking in a crisis, the mindsets that make brave creativity possible and techniques for forming a positive, problem-solving network. Our two facilitators are a design studio leader and an ex-headteacher – both interested in pushing boundaries in their discipline. We will use visual techniques to highlight what happens when different minds meet to solve real-world problems…and how rule-breaking approaches to design and communication can have an impact on the world around us.

Leadership Lemonade brings designers, educators and leaders together to form a community to support headteachers in their return to school post-Covid. We believe that being creative in the way we share our experiences (and thinking laterally about who we learn from) can build the confidence to think differently and strategically even when dealing with a crisis – such as reopening a school during a pandemic. New possibilities for education appear when graphic designers, teachers, triage nurses and military leaders come together…

Did your hut stand up? Or crash spectacularly? Did you have fun? We invited you to design and build a hut during the festival.

Over lunch, five experts in the field of architecture and construction, Lynne Cox, Kathy Li, Kirsty Cassels, Alison Watson and Hanneke Scott-van Wel, will celebrate your creative hutting experiments and hopefully inspire you to hut some more!
Join us! It will be fun and inspiring #howtohut2020

We (exam.scot) will use the COVID 19 lockdown and subsequent exam foul up to explore possibilities around exams and certification. We don’t have the answers. We don’t believe there’s only one road.

We do know we need to use the disruption in the system to stimulate debate, discussion and even disagreement.

A few reps from exam.scot will share key points from website and twitter threads to facilitate such discussion at Creative Bravery Festival via zoom.

An event designed to support practitioners in exploring their VIBE. We challenge practitioners to use their reflection to support an enquiring approach to disrupt our thinking about education.

VIBE noun: a person’s emotional state or character as communicated and felt by others.

verb: transmit or give out

VIBE builds on traditional approaches of self reflection and drags them into the 21st Century. Our vast experience from a range of sectors allows us to peel back the blinkers and challenge practitioners to look beyond the constructs they function within, challenge the norm and embrace new ways of thinking. Say goodbye to your comfort zone. It’s not welcome here.

Participants will be invited to observe a series of images and sounds that aim to reflect the importance of biodiversity for ecological sustainability. Embracing diversity is lacking in our education systems.

There is a lack of emphasis on learning from and with nature and our place in it. To build a world where these are key elements of education and allow the student to explore and imagine diverse, sustainable futures is one of the most important goals education can achieve.

While the world shut down, we linked up!

Link Online Learners is a series of weekly live link ups between young people of different cultures from all around the world. LOL chats are where your own culture and way of living connects you to the coolest house party playdate full of learning, empathy-building and healthy international mindfulness. LOL breaks down national barriers and has been recognised by the OECD.

Global video chats led by young people, for young people. ONE LINK. ONE CLICK. ONE WORLD.

Everybody can draw, and this session will get us out of our chairs, listening to each other to define problems and then sharing solutions with quick, rough sketches. The interactive workshop will be led by Randy Fielding, an award-winning school architect that likes to hula hoop during Zoom meetings.

Participants will join small breakout groups, share ideas and then draw individually. Brave attendees will share their work with larger groups. Bring paper (A4 , 11 x 17 or tabloid if you have it), and colored markers. We will have fun and solve real-world problems that are important to you.

Did you design your place for learning this week? How did you get on? Did you have fun? As you are the experts, we invited you to imagine and design your ideal place for learning.

Professionals in the field of architecture and education will share and celebrate all the different design ideas that were submitted this week and hopefully inspire new places for learning. Join us! It will be fun and inspiring #yourplaceforlearning2020

Both learners and staff are facing an increasing burden of stress in a complex, uncertain world. HearMath self-regulation techniques are simple yet powerful practices to access the wiser parts of our brain, so we can thrive rather than simply survive. Our talk will be highly experiential and each participant will leave with tools to help them wisely focus, learn and navigate uncertain times.

It’s creatively brave because it challenges people to prioritise and focus on their inner state rather than ticking boxes. It combines wisdom of ancient mystics with cutting-edge science to offer practical ways to actually thrive in today’s world for children and adults alike. We need new ways of being not just doing in order to adapt and thrive in today’s world.

Join Marie Hernandez & Ethelinda Lashley-Scott in a discussion group which will make the case for getting Scotland’s shared history in relation to slavery on our national curriculum in every school in Scotland.

They want to share good and emerging practices in relation to how the teaching of slavery has or could be achieved and inspire others to lobby or influence their own workplaces to make this happen. It is creatively brave because it encourages educators to influence the national curriculum from the bottom up. Encouraging them to move from trusted teacher to disruptor. It also encourages participants to be brave and admit they may not have all the answers, while facilitating dialogue and discussion around sensitive issues which some may find hard to get started for fear of doing or saying the wrong thing.

You will hear from Sir Geoff Palmer OBE, a parent advocate (Marie Hernandez) and an educator (Ethelinda Lashley-Scott), on why this is important to them and why it should be important to us all.

Wee Inventors consists of four Product Design students from Edinburgh Napier University –  Kathleen Craig, Lara Peters-Dougan, Katarzyna Pohorecka and Jordan Sills. 
They are passionate about creating and inventing, and over the last few months have been working with a local Edinburgh Primary school to get kids inspired by design and being creative.

Working alongside 1st year product design students, they have turned the school kids ideas into reality by curating an exhibition for this community project.  

We are the Daydream Believers. We are inspiring our young people to be brave, to build new things and to create meaning in today’s networked world. Our partners create free online resources for teachers, which we believe will help shape and inform the curriculum in our secondary schools.

Please join us as we share our experiences of working on this inspiring project and support you with lessons you can use in your classroom.

The Daydream Believers programme is an exciting example of what happens when education and industry connect to bring about change. All you need is a pen, paper and your imagination!

Visit the website: https://daydreambelievers.co.uk/