Creative Clusters: A Collaborative approach to Cultivating Creativity in Schools

Creative Clusters is a pilot initiative of the Government of Ireland’s Department of Education (DoE). The initiative provides opportunities for clusters of schools to come together to experiment, innovate and collaborate on the design, implementation and evaluation of bespoke arts and creative learning projects. In this way, Creative Clusters seeks to promote new ways of collaboration between schools, and between schools and the arts and cultural sectors. These collaborations are designed to improve teaching and learning, and to enable learners and teachers to develop their creativity.

This research and evaluation report focuses on the development of Creative Clusters over the pilot phase of the initiative in the academic years 2018/19 and 2019/20. (The pilot was extended into the first term of the 2020/21 academic year due to the school closures resulting from COVID-19.) In the academic year 2018/19, 23 clusters, comprising 71 schools, participated in Creative Clusters, with 68 of these schools continuing into the 2019/20 academic year. In 2019/20, a further 21 clusters, comprising 76 schools, were added. The clusters contained between two and five schools, and were comprised of primary schools only, post-primary schools only, and a combination of both primary and post-primary schools.

Report by:

Dr. Dorothy Morrissey (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick)

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