Celebrating creativity collaboratively: inspiring PGCE English trainees to teach creatively writing

In the context of recent and on-going changes in the National Curriculum, this
article outlines an initiative collaboratively undertaken by PGCE English tutors
at three neighbouring universities in the South West of England; with their 70
Secondary English trainees, they challenged themselves as creative writers,
guided by a T. S. Eliot Prize-winning poet and a professional story teller and
writer. The article explores their quest to translate the renewed emphasis
derived from policy to (re)–introduce creativity into the English classroom.
Their inter-university collaboration sought to: develop their PGCE trainee
teachers’ self confidence as creative writers; provide an experimental
experience of how to stimulate the creative process in the classroom; and
encourage them in turn to nurture their students as creative writers and
appreciative, critical readers of others’ creative writing. We offer a case study
which has the focus of teaching for creativity whilst simultaneously being an
act of creative teaching. Finally, questions which emerged during the
enterprise are posed about the role of creative writing in the secondary English
classroom.