Hal MacLean, Shirley Pickford and myself headed to Manchester’s G-Mex arena for the first ever ‘Exciting Minds’ conference and arena by Creative Partnerships.
Shirley and myself represented the ‘Digital Teacher Network‘ which is a free online portal for teachers to manage projects online. 51 other exhibitors shared the arena with us, all based out of inflatable pods, it was really quite remarkable. To our right were Channel Four Learning, over the walkway opposite were the British Council.
Shirley and myself manned the pod all day talking to the other exhibitors, visitors and delegates of the show, which is really quite important. It still amazes me how creativity is not a core part of the British Education system curriculum, it was refreshing to read the words of Tessa Jowell after her keynote speech (See here).
Professor Stephen Heppell, founder of Ultralab and Director of Heppell.net also spoke on the future of creativity in education. In the sessions Hal MacLean from our team spoke to an audience on the future of school design, reflecting on his extensive experience in the field, relating the national and international case studies on what is good and indeed needs work where learning space design is concerned. On his return to the arena Hal spent the afternoon at the Digital Teacher Network pod speaking with the delegates that followed him back from his talk.
It was great to once again spend the day working with Shirley who delighted the audiences with examples of creativity use within education, reflecting on her experiences which date back to the Tesco School Net 2000 project, Shirley was the Millennium Dome based representative for that creativity central project.
It was also nice to see so many friends turning up and exploring the arena.
 
Some images from the event: