Creativity is at the heart of the resource. AGENDA has been written as a series of suggestions for you to build on creatively.
A key aim of AGENDA is to show you how working creatively can support children and young people in sharing what matters to them across a range of relationship and sexuality education (RSE) issues.
We can start by asking the question, ‘What does it mean to get creative?’
All the activities and case studies on the AGENDA website combine creative methods (e.g. drama, drawing, dance) with creative pedagogy (i.e. when uncertainty and curiosity are folded into the mix).
Working in the creative mode, such as story-telling, crafting, movement or music enables us to become more aware of what matters to children and young people.
They can enable you to find out what children and young people do and don’t know, and what they would like to learn more about and why. This process is sometimes referred to as ‘age appropriate’ or ‘developmentally appropriate’ teaching.
Being creative involves the six elements outlined in this section.
IMAGINATION
Working creatively and critically can enable children and young people to imagine other lives, identities, families, experiences and ways of being in the world. This is often achieved through fictional stories, drama and visualisation.
Imagination – the process of forming new images in the mind that have not been previously been seen, heard, or felt before.
SENSORY
Working in the creative mode can encourage new responses to familiar or unfamiliar feelings, ideas, movements, concepts or situations. Objects and artefacts crafted through a creative process on what matters to children and young people can also be shared for others to interact with in multi-sensory ways.
Humans are sensate creatures: sight (vision), hearing (audition), taste (gustation), smell (olfaction), and touch (somatosensation) are the five most commonly recognized senses. The ability to detect other stimuli beyond these senses also exists.
CURIOSITY
Being creative very often involves learning to unlearn what we think we know, so that we can be curious about ‘what matters’ to children and young people. This requires an openness to listen to what children tell us, and being able to adapt activities to their interests and needs.
Curiosity: from Latin cūriōsus, meaning "careful, diligent, curious" and cura "care" - a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning.
ART-FUL
What makes something art-ful is the way an event, artefact or experience unfolds to show you the potential of what more it might become. Runaway creativity is the process whereby grey areas can be opened up for expression and discussion, where ideas take off and new connections are made.
SAFE AND INCLUSIVE
Creative methods and pedagogy can support you to create safe and inclusive environments where all children and young people are listened to. By using a wide range of expression you can create spaces for children to feel, think, question, and share sensate, sensitive or difficult issues, without revealing too much of themselves, such as what jars them, what is harmful, what is fair or what is consensual.
ETHICAL
Using creative methods isn’t a matter of anything goes. Allowing ideas and expressions to flourish is important, but so is keeping a check on how power relations, norms and inequalities play out (e.g. how are gender or racialized stereotypes reinforced, questioned or challenged).
