It has been widely recognized that creativity is the vital ingredient that needs to be cultivated if we are all to survive and flourish in this 21st Century. 



“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status” says noted educationalist, Ken Robinson. One of the best ways to…

Recently the Centre for the Arts in Rotterdam published a report of an educational art project I worked on: ‘Expeditie 3037’.

Unfortunately only in Dutch, but I hope the publication still may inspire you: http://issuu.com/anton_klein/docs/090713_cbk-imelda_weblr 

Expedition 3037: research in your own neighbourhood.



"Students in the age of 10-12 of Imelda…

Paulino Ricardo © Mozambique National Commission for UNESCO

In the exhibition hall in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, 85 young Mozambicans presented the fruits of their newly gained creative skills. They have gained their skills through a nation-wide project that was brought…

ICEnet has got its Facebook page now as well! We will be reminding you of interesting content on the platform, sharing new items, asking questions, giving answers – and making sure you have another way to discuss and learn more about everything related to creative education. Like, comment, share, post, link; lurk secretly or flood it with your presence; and enjoy!

Nikky Smedley on Creative Education – interview

Nikky, you have a lot of experience of working for and with children. What does this mean to you? And what would you say is the main difference for you between working with children and working with adults?

[Nikky] That’s an interesting one. A lot of my work has a great deal of humour at its core, and anyone who…

Dear ICEnet members

ICEnet is a community full of fascinating and inspiring people, stories, experiences, successes and aspirations. As it would be a pity for them to stay unnoticed, we have decided to feature every now and then ICEnet members whose work might give you something to think about.

So, without further ado, let us introduce to you…

Nikky Smedley

Who is…

Dear ICEnet members

Welcome to the first official ICEnet newsflash! With nearly a hundred members now, our community is growing nicely.  There are creative professionals who attended the International Creative Practitioners Forum in Vilnius in May (which marked the official launch of ICEnet online platform); those involved in Creative Partnerships Norway; artists involved in the exchange Artists in Creative Education – Pakistan and UK; and…

An blogpost by a creative practitioner explaining us why it is worth the effort to work with young children and the arts. An inspiring list of six reasons:

1. Children are ready for arts. Now.

Children are born receptive, ready to learn.

At birth, we have almost all of the 100 billion neurons that make up our brains, and about a quarter of the connections between them – synapses. But almost all of these synapses are formed by the age of around…

CultureNet Flanders, a Belgian audience development agency, has developed a toolkit  to help networks identify their relative strengths and weaknesses, their different audiences and how they can collaborate to create a comprehensive offer for local families. This is a more elaborated version of the toolkit the Arts Council England and Audiences UK created a couple of years ago that provides a range of resources and guidance to enable cultural organisations to engage more…

Paul Collard's first blog is now on the Creativity, Culture and Education website – to read the blog click here.

It’s been a month now since the International Creative Practitioners Forum participants returned from Vilnius to their homes all over Europe. What was the month like? At what occasion did you get a chance to use something particular that you’d learnt at the Forum? Did something make you recall particular people/events/discussions from the Forum? Have you stayed in touch with people you had met there? Any interesting collaborations emerging?

Let us know how your life and work…

Dear all,



We invite you to explore visual harvest created during the first ICEnet Forum in Vilnius. Together with my colleague, we attempted to capture the journey to the land of Creative Education. Visual recording includes our insights on the emerging patterns and the essence of the event, documentation of each workshop produced by supporting facilitators, and the main points raised during closing reflections.



We hope this helps to keep the…

I recently discovered an intriguing quote:

"We need to make Artists in every profession."

Jody Giles, CIO of Under Armour, Inc.

Source: Education Closet, How Creativity Changes the Game

I like how this fits my belief that creative thinking, originality, playfulness, openness to unconventional ideas and…

Some of you taking part in the event in Vilnius on 22–24 May 2013 might have missed our nice colourful reflection board situated in the Open Space of the venue, which provided some key ideas and reflections on the Forum and mainly its workshops. Facilitators of each workshop provided the two creative minds (and four creative hands) working relentlessly until the very end of the Forum with their feedback on questions emerged, emotions triggered or discussed, major ideas/issues, structure of…

To everyone who participated on Friday in my Spoken Works workshop, I've created a group creativity, arts and language learning, in which I posted the slides of the workshop. thanks for attending and all the nice comments and ideas. I hope we can keep on sharing ideas in this formum and the group, so please join.  Jan

DICE (“Drama Improves Lisbon Key Competences in Education”) was an international EU-supported project. In addition to other educational aims, this two-year project was a cross-cultural research study investigating the effects of educational theatre and drama on five of the eight Key Competences. The research was conducted by twelve partners (DICE Consortium; leader: Hungary).

To read background information, research findings, recommendations or resources and…

For decades I am working in art education. And I think I am rather good at it. Within the Dutch circumstances, I am convinced that I come up with original ideas and innovative projects. Yes, you are right, I am pretty arrogant. And I realize it.

When I got my invitation to attend the Vilnius conference, I had to think about my arrogance. I decided that the only way in which that meeting could contribute to my personal development was to leave my arrogance at home. And I can assure…

After having a good night sleep after the Vilnius conference, I still feel lucky that I had the opportunity to attend this meeting. What a nice enthousiastic people, what an inspiring discussions, what a drive to improve art education...

But the day after, I also have a lot of questions. These questions are not ment as criticism to the congress, but (for me) as a starting point to further discussion.

• Do artists need courses / workshops to improve their work at…

To everyone who participated in my WordCraft workshop on Thursday, here's the prose poetry exercise that we didn't have time to do...hope it's useful, and let me know if you have any questions about how to use it. Lovely to see and meet everyone!

WordCraft%20prose%20poetry%20example.docx

My reflection on ICEnet forum