Anna Craft’s Legacy: The importance of creativity to teaching and learning and its role in resisting and challenging performativity. Reflections on a creative partnership. (Speaker: Bob Jeffrey, University of Exeter)

Bob Jeffrey, who worked closely with Anna Craft from the early Nineties, will reflect upon the reasons for developing creativity in education, its successes and its importance for teachers, schools and learners. The period will cover the introduction of the first National Curriculum, SATs , Ofsted inspections, Literacy and Numeracy programmes and increasing performativity in primary schools. He will provide examples of how they opened up a popular space for creativity in education in the UK and more globally which still pertains to today. He will argue that creativity in education is vital as a teaching methodology, crucial for developing learner’s own creativity and a necessary element to maintain a high profile for creativity itself, as Anna did, in order to ensure productive economies and innovatory practices.