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Empowering excellence (from everywhere)

Bio

Katriona is professor in the Assisting Living & Learning Institute, Department of Psychology, Maynooth University. She is also a memoirist and her first book,Poor, debuted at #1 on the Irish Non-Fiction bestseller list. She is the Principal Investigator on the STEM Passport for Inclusion project, featured on RTE Changemaker series. She has held research grants from the Irish Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland leading initiatives to tackle digital inequality in education.  She also successfully led the largest HEA PATH funded programme entitled Turn to Teaching which focused on diversifying teacher education. She has been invited speaker at the UN, the World Education Forum, the European Gender Action Workshop on Women and Digitalization. She has worked with Irish policy makers to develop policies around education and inclusion. She has published research on equality, gender, education, inclusion and STEM.   

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Choreographies of possibility: Educating so that plurality of creativities is possible

Abstract

We live at a time when humanity is facing profound challenges. In response, we need to radically change our systems of education and professional development so that we can co-author the choreographies of possibility that foster new knowledge systems (epistemologies) and ways of being (ontologies) and doing (creativities). To address our wicked problems, we do not simply need new solutions; we need to look for new sciences and creativities altogether, different forms of knowing, being and doing. In this talk, I will invite you to consider a re-orientating assemblage of choreographies of possibility. I will discuss: (i) the plurality of creativities and its connections with how we articulate the meaning of our lives, both individually and collectively; (ii) materialities of experience that inspire new ways of producing, curating and consuming; and (iii) ontologies of difference that enable us to imagine a multiplicity of creativities that are indeterminate, distributed and collective.

Bio

Pamela Burnard is Professor of Arts, Creativities and Educations at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She has published widely with 25 books and over 150 articles which advance the theory and practice of multiple creativities across education sectors including early years, primary, secondary, further and higher/further education, through to creative and cultural industries. Current funded projects include ‘Choices, Chances and Transitions around Creative Further and Higher Education’ (funded by The Nuffield Trust) and ‘Digital Playgrounds for Music’ (DPfM) (funded by Huddersfield University). Her most recent books include ‘Eruptive Research: Landscapes on Research in Teaching and Learning’ (Brill-i-Sense) and ‘The Power of Pluralising Creativities’ (Brill-i-Sense). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, UK and Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation (ISSCI) and Professor-in-Residence and Governor at The University of Cambridge Primary School (UCPS).

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Trans theoretics as creative possibility

Abstract

Like queer theory emerging from the more static fields of gay, lesbian and gender studies, trans theoretics emerge out of queer theory and postgenderism into something broader still. There have been several articulations of the liberatory potential of a ‘postgender’ society, but in this talk I will return to Shulasmith Firestone’s 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex, and Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto. I do so to explore the possibility of a trans theoretic that might offer us a ‘third way/space’ in which to move into the unknown, one that does not demand an arrival—teleologically, socially, or technologically. Like queer theory, a trans theoretic offers the possibility of going beyond established binary biases in scholarship. Trans theoretics suggest ways of thinking and doing that are not linear, are not even directional, are not about moving from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’, but rather about moving itself, and the joys, affordances, and limitless creative potential of moving into ourselves during times of terrifying change

Bio

Daniel X. Harris (they/them) is a Professor in the School of Education, and Director of Creative Agency research lab: www.creativeresearchhub.com . Harris is editor of the book series Creativity, Education and the Arts (Palgrave), and has authored, co-authored or edited 22 books and over 150 chapters and articles as well as plays, films and spoken word performances. Their research focuses on creativity studies, cultural, sexual and gender diversities, and on performance and activism. They are committed to the power of collaborative creative practice and social justice research to inform social change.

Conference dinner

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The Study of Creative Pedagogy as a Possibility for Informing Creative Practice  

Abstract

Education at any level can be a distinct catalyst for endless possibilities to occur and advance. This early career keynote speech aims to inspire others to interact with and partake in possibility thinking, using imagination and promoting creativity, by virtue of results uncovered and communicated from recent research conducted on teachers’ engagement with creativity in the Irish post-primary Music classroom. Helping to advocate how creativity, imagination and possibility study practice may enhance both teachers’ and students’ teaching and learning experiences in the classroom, an outline of teachers’ agency, beliefs about creativity in education, and teachers’ self-efficacy will be described. Interestingly, this research draws on some conflicting evidence between self-reporting on creative practice and description of engagement with creative practice. Evidence from this research will also highlight teachers concerns in incorporating creativity and imagination into their teaching while acknowledging the dichotomy between needing creativity and imagination in education, and teaching to the test. The possibilities within pedagogic practice in classrooms are diverse. I will leave the audience with the question: Why not extend a hand to invite multiple possibilities into the education sphere through employing creative pedagogy and seeing where it may take the learners of today and tomorrow?

Bio

Dr Jenny O’Sullivan is a musicologist, a post-primary Music and English educator and a music and creativity researcher. She has considerable interest in the integration of music in the community, the accessibility of music and music education for all, the creative endeavours of teachers and their students, and an enthusiasm for leadership in creativity within music education in particular, as well as in all areas of curriculum study and schooling. Jenny has served as a member of a development group for Cork Education and Training Board’s Arts in Education Strategy (2022), developing a framework for arts provision within Cork ETB schools. Her research interests are multitudinous including music, music education, creativity, creativity and imagination in education, possibility studies, creative leadership and arts education and policy.

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Space to Create: Expanding Possibilities, Meaning-Making and Collaboration

Bio

Screenwriter, Founder & Artistic Director of Le Groupe Ouest Following a first life as a sailor fascinated by mathematics and an interrupted Phd in philosophy at the Sorbonne, he graduated from the CEEA in Paris (the French conservatory for film writing) in 1996. After writing and directing a few awarded short films, a Chamber Opera in Paris as well on-stage experiments with a Philharmonic Orchestra in Prague, he co-wrote the 3D animation series Ratz, wrote for independent cinema with directors like Atiq Rahimi or Lucile Hadzihalilovic, and won the Gan Foundation Prize as a writer in 2005. 

In 2005, he founded LE GROUPE OUEST in western Brittany/France, a place created by writers for writers in a seaside village. Le Groupe Ouest has become a leading place in Europe for the coaching of the script development phase in residency (more than two thousand writers and filmmakers from all over the world coached in the last 20 years). Since 2015, he launched a focus on the ideation phase (called Pre-writing), which path of research led him to launch the StoryTANK a European think tank putting together screenwriters and researchers coming from various fields (cognitive science, physiology, anthropology, phenomenology…), in order to open new understandings and perspectives.