As advertised in 'Our Events' our year kicked off with our Director, Ali Golding, leading a round table discussion session at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance Conference ‘Igniting Creativity, Art, Education, Transformation and Change’

Joining artists and educators from across the cultural sector to explore the powerful intersections between the arts, education, and policy-making and fostering innovative approaches to societal challenges. This year's conference theme was centred around inspiring creative thinking in arts practice and pedagogy, while emphasising the critical role of the arts in shaping inclusive, forward-thinking policies, procedures, identities and vision.

Ali was joined in the session by esteemed colleague, Professor Dido Green.

MovementWorks® Round Table Session: 'What is creativity and how do we measure it?'
explored the challenges in defining creativity to support development and learning.

Dance offers opportunities for development of imaginative play, problem solving, motor skills and initiation of social behaviors. Despite this, the International Classification of Functioning does not include a domain for creativity. Consequently, there are limited/no measures to evaluate benefits of arts programmes for individuals with developmental disorders.

Ali presented data from our latest peer reviewed published research for autistic children exploring perspectives of parents, teachers and dance practitioners and Dido presented data from a review of dance in neurorehabilitation. These findings were put forward for round table discussion for delegates to consider items and definitions for concepts to be included in a new measure for the evaluation of creative therapeutic programs across different contexts which forms next phase of our contribution to progressive research in this field.

Now is your chance to take part in the formulation of this new measure via our survey!
Click here to access the Survey... and Have Your Say!