CCE has been working with the Society for Creativity in Education in the Czech Republic for over 10 years, developing training and supporting a large scale Creative Partnerships programme. At the end of 2019, CCE’s Director of Programmes, Di Fisher-Naylor was invited to author and deliver training for the Creative Partnerships for Sustainable Development Goals programme, which is a partnership with Charles University Environment Centre. The training was designed to help participants investigate and plan how children can be supported to organise a community activity which deals with one or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with the children becoming the agents of change.

The attendees included teachers, creative practitioners and university staff and included a focus on giving participants a deeper understanding of pupil voice and how to embed this in their work with children and young people.

The participants were also introduced to the concepts related to Design Thinking, a non-linear, iterative process which seeks to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. The aim of the programme is for the educators and young people to use the concepts from the training within the planning and implementation of the community activity.

“CCE’s training event was very enriching, both in terms of the content we covered and the lively, playful, and inspiring activities offered. Di has a wealth of experience in developing activities which engage the whole person – head, heart and hands – which made me feel wide awake for the whole 2 days, and I learnt several collaborative knowledge building and sharing activities which I can use in the future with my students and colleagues. Di made big concepts such as the sustainable development goals and the Voice of the Child concept very accessible and it was possible to feel the deep learning happening in all of the participants as we processed these concepts and used them as a lens to analyse and re-evaluate our project work with young people. I left feeling empowered, energised, clear and hopeful about how to conceptualise and steer my work.”

Laura Henderson

“The workshop was very inspiring, it offered enriching learning experiences about design thinking, creative education and learning that I did not know about. In addition to that, we did various practical activities in order to support connection, communication, and creativity. I use some of these activities nowadays with children in classes and I found them very helpful. I am grateful for the whole experience.”

Masa Hilcisin