Children And Creativity

Arts provision for children in Britain is poor. It's so poor, it may violate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen, has criticised local councils and central government for cutbacks on arts activities, youth clubs and adventure playgrounds.

Rosen, in Socialist Worker, has also recently spoken out on creativity being absent in education:

We have to spend a great deal of time, thought and energy in working out how to make the meaning of what children read exciting, interesting and fun. If we want children to read, we have to work out how to make book-loving schools and book-loving homes. Schools should have the money to employ trained librarians and home-school reading liaison staff to work with parents on finding and reading interesting books.

We need to dispense with the futile system of asking children questions that teachers already know the answers to. Instead, we need to set up a space where we invite children to ask the people in a story questions that puzzle them and where other children can pretend to be those characters and try to answer the questions.

Books can also be seen as starting points for putting on shows, creating art, dance, music, film and powerpoint displays. The work that children write shouldn’t be shut away in scrappy little exercise books but should be published and performed.
This way a connection is made in the children’s minds between the world of literature and their own ability to write.