On Tuesday this week Rob Howell @roberthowell and I spent a day with a group of 40 staff and students from St Mary's Catholic College http://www.st-mary.blackpool.sch.uk/ in Blackpool to look at creativity in school, how it contributes to and supports learning and the barriers to creativity. It was a wonderful day held at the Solaris Centre http://www.solariscentre.org/ which resulted in a wealth of information about how young people feel about the school and their hopes and ambitions for the future.

One of the activities during the day was 'Looking Back' with each group presented with a box of objects which would be discovered 100 years from now and which tell the story of how St Mary's became the most creative school in the country in 2014. The objects were random, some had a clear use others quite abstract and it was fascinating to see how the groups of young people coped with taking an abstract concept (imagining a truly creative school of the future, transporting themselves 100 years into the future and looking back) and then taking their ideas and exploring how objects could help communicate that story.

I was also really interested to see how this group of students managed working in a much more open, collaborative and exploratory way - with support and guidance from teachers, but working very much independently. Throughout the day they coped well and everyone found a way to contribute, but at times groups and individuals struggled and needed far more input from adults. I was really impressed by the way the teachers stepped back and assessed when they were needed and when they should let young people find the way themselves. This is a really valuable skill and the approach enabled young people to take risks and express themselves within a safe and supportive environment.

We aspire to create learning environments which provide space for exploration, curiosity and risk-taking, and sometimes it is a real challenge for both pupils and teachers to adapt to this way of working. I did reasonably well in school, and a contributing factor is that I worked well and felt comfortable in a traditional classroom environment. Had I been put in the environment the young people found themselves in on Tuesday, how would I have coped? Would I have sat quietly, worried about getting it wrong and feeling lost, or would I have contributed to the sessions? I hope I would have participated fully, and looking back I think the skills that I needed to do so would more likely have been developed outside the classroom (at Guides, at the local church youth club, from being in a community opera or the netball team) than sitting in the classroom, listening to information and being tested on my knowledge. I wonder what I would be doing now had I not had the opportunity to be part of these groups and had I not been fortunate enough to have parents who did everything they could to support my interests.

Changing how we teach and learn is not going to happen overnight. It is going to require hard work, imagination, resiliance, collaboration and support and I suspect will be an ever evolving process as the world changes and young people have to be ready to take on the challenges of adult life. You only have to watch shift happens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNutcmyShW4 to see how different the world is now than when any of us left school (and this is a presentation which is a couple of years old now - who knows what has happened since).

I still have more time to spend with the school and will be sitting in on lessons, drawing, photographing and chatting and I will probably keep blogging about the process. I am really enjoying being part of the St Mary's story and am currently wondering what archaeologists might find on the site in the future and how they would interpret those objects.

I have an urge to plant something really obscure just to confuse them!