>> Liz Conacher, Schools Learning Coordinator: The role of the National Galleries Scotland
education team is to make the Scottish national collection accessible to as wide a range of
people as possible and one of the key messages we are trying to get across to people is that
it is your collection, it belongs to you, it belongs to the people of Scotland.
But we know that most children are never going to walk in the door of the gallery unless
a teacher has brought them in.
We need to understand the needs of teachers and the needs of the curriculum, the needs
of learners.
That is only going to happen if we are working with teachers to understand what they need.
Teachers spend all year nurturing other people and we really wanted to give them an opportunity
to be nurtured instead.
So the Creativity Summer School has been a five day experience for teachers to be inspired,
supported and challenged and to bring together a community of teachers to support each other.
>> Shirley McGregor, Primary School Teacher: I decided to come to summer school programme
this year because it was going to enable me to have some time and space to explore this
whole notion of creativity.
>> Stuart Watson, English Teacher: It motivated me I suppose, the desire to push the creativity
and the boundaries of my classroom and the learning experiences within the classroom.
>> Liz Conacher, Schools Learning Coordinator: This week has been a mix of practical techniques
and questioning.
We�ve spent a lot of time challenging assumptions and that is something that children and young
people are expected to do, but that can be really terrifying thing for teachers to do
in class.
Artists challenge assumptions about the world around us all the time.
We have been using Scottish art as a stimulus for exploring the world around us.
>> Claire Gibb, Creative Catalyst, Room 13 International: There is a real range of artists
behind the works that we are looking at and behind each one of these artworks, of course,
is an idea.
>> Paul Gorman, Creative Catalyst, Hidden Giants: I think some people are thinking definitely
about their role as a teacher, which is exactly what we wanted this week to be.
That they are understanding creativity is something that is useful for them as a way
of them taking more control and having agency within their job.
>> Anna Hazel-Dunn, Head Teacher: I think across the week for me personally I have developed
the confidence that I have in my knowledge and understanding about creativity.
How valuable that is for learning and for teaching and that is something that I am going
to go back feeling much more confident about delivering that message to the staff.
>> Richard Page, Primary School Teacher: I have questioned what I have been doing for
the last ten years a lot more so hopefully that will make me think if the children are
not learning, I won�t do it.
>> Claire Gibb, Creative Catalyst, Room 13 International: I think what we have seen is
people getting more confidence in their own ideas and the idea of themselves and their
own creativity as a key resource in their teaching, cause ultimately it is your own
enthusiasm and interest in a subject that will kind of switch on the learners.
>> Shirley McGregor, Primary School Teacher: We have been given some really good guidance
and framework to try and allow us to express and to explore the possibilities and never
be afraid of the sort of unknown.
>> Josie Fairley Keast, Contributing Young Artist: From the perspective of someone who
has only just left school themselves I think it would be really good if teachers learned
to make the curriculum suit them rather than trying to tailor all their classes to fit
the curriculum.
>> Paul Gorman, Creative Catalyst, Hidden Giants: I think what I have seen this week
is teachers accepting that they have to take bigger risks and risk taking is about confidence
and accepting that failure will probably be part of this.
And we need more teachers to have the confidence to do that.
>> Liz Conacher, Schools Learning Coordinator: We hope that the creativity summer school
is going to start building a community of teachers that can become a peer support network.
We are also hoping that the teachers are going to go away feeling empowered, feeling confident,
feeling happy about taking risks in the classroom and trying something new that they might not
have had the confidence to try it before.