No, not at all. You might be a Head of Year, an AoLE Lead, a Curriculum Lead, a Pastoral
Lead or ALNCo. If you have whole school responsibility for any aspect of teaching and
learning, we’d love to hear from you. Equally, you could be a class teacher who is
particularly interested in exploring creative learning and taking a lead for this within your
own setting.
Absolutely not. Creativity is an essential skill for life aligned with the 4 Core Purposes and
cuts across all AoLEs. Creative learning pedagogy is relevant and useful in devising
innovative, authentic and engaging experiences for all learners.
Yes, you do. It is a condition of your participation. This is to ensure you get the most out of
your experience and benefit from the NAEL endorsed and Welsh Government/Arts Council
of Wales funded professional learning opportunities. You should only apply if you are sure
you will be fully available for all the various commitments.
In supporting their leaders, we have observed that Creative Agents support can often be
characterised as coaching. Our definition of leadership coaching is: Partnering in a
thought-provoking and creative process that inspires a person to maximise their personal
and professional potential (International Coaching Federation). The benefits of leading
coaching include:
1. Empowerment through supportive and reflective conversations towards achieving goals;
2. New insight through questioning;
3. Free thinking through generating greater flexibility in thinking by questioning that
prompts the leader to see other perspectives;
4. Enhanced performance in both attitude and ability through getting the most out of own
and others' talents;
5. Improved communication by developing clarity in messaging. (Insala, 2019
Yes, you do. Working with your contracted Creative Agent is not optional and working in
partnership is a condition of participation. We know schools, and leaders are very busy
places, and the programme is designed to be adaptable to fit around your work
commitments. However, we have observed that sometimes leaders really struggle with
finding availability to meet their Creative Agents. Where problems like that arise this can
result in failing to complete the programme - we want to avoid that. Please carefully
consider your commitment to this fundamental element before applying.
No, it’s totally up to you and your Creative Agent how you choose to plan the time
allocation together. This could consist of some in person meeting and some online; a
mixture of differing lengths of time (for example, a half day planning session followed by
hourly weekly catch ups).
No, the Creative Agent is there as a coach to you personally throughout the programme.
This is all about you. Valuable time for you to pause and reflect on your own practice and
leadership. Understanding, of course, that anything you discover through experimentation
will ultimately benefit the learners too. This is not about bringing Creative Agents in to work
with learners.
Yes, we do. We fund the costs of supply cover for you to attend the training, networking
and sharing sessions. We also fund the provision of your Creative Agent. It is a condition of
participation that you do fully utilise the 3 days’ worth of time with your Creative Agent
though how you break up that time is agreed on an individual basis.
That is up to you and your Creative Agent to decide. The programme runs for between 18 -
20 weeks and is designed to fit around term dates and your responsibilities within school.
We are flexible as we understand life in schools and just how busy you are.
No. Each school leader and Creative Agent decide on what creative learning and creative
leadership goal you have and areas of interest to explore and develop. This is then
addressed as an enquiry question.
Absolutely. You will be assigned a Project Lead from within the Creative Learning team at
the Arts Council of Wales as well as your own Creative Agent. All our Creative Agents on the
Creative Leadership Programme are highly experienced and skilled creative practitioners. In
addition, we will be drawing upon alumni from the programme to share their experiences
with you as well as bringing the current cohort together regularly for networking and
sharing.
What we say to our Creative Agents about their own professional learning and
development whilst working on this programme: The role of the Creative Agent in the
Creative Leadership Programme borrows from but is distinctly different to the traditional
Creative Agent role on a Lead Creative Schools enquiry. The benefits of taking on this role
are multi layered but are likely to include some, if not all of the following:
• significant new insights and experience into your own professional practice,
professional value and capabilities;
• new perspectives on your unique approaches and strengths to support and nurture
creativity in others;
• opportunities for informal peer to peer support; training and support from Arts
Council of Wales Creative Leadership Team;
• a great sense of vicarious achievement and satisfaction as you observe your leaders
development.