We want the social creativity toolkit to be useful for teachers, educators, and facilitators. It can also be used by anyone who wants to know more about social creativity when planning a learning event.
Social Creativity
Our Toolkit brings people together
Social creativity happens when people keep or achieve a positive social identity by changing how they understand relations between groups. It can combine different approaches and follow different guidelines, while focusing on the identities and experiences of individuals to keep knowledge processes positive and distinct. Our Social Creativity Toolkit helps people from different backgrounds to come together to enjoy a shared experience. It combines citizen science, art, and gender perspectives, focusing on sensory experiences and empowering each person's unique identity within the group.
THINK DIFFERENTLY
“Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought." – Albert Einstein
Self-reflection
Social inclusion is an ongoing process that needs constant reflection and adaptation.
Our toolkit offers a guided self-reflection exercise to help users think and review learning activities, while recognizing everyone’s role in every step.
We invite users to explore the Four W’s — Why, Who, What, Where — to think about different environmental and social situations, from the individual level to communities and society as a whole.
It’s a simple exercise that helps to understand every unique aspect of each learning activity, no matter where it is.
Approaches
Citizen Science
It invites individuals from diverse backgrounds to actively participate in scientific and social inquiry.
It resonates with project-based learning, where hands-on projects and collaborative problem-solving become central tools for engaging citizens in the creation of knowledge.
It empowers participants, encouraging them to move from being passive recipients of information to active co-creators.
Gender
An intersectional approach to gender recognizes the complex, layered identities that individuals bring to collaborative spaces.
Gender diversity approach actively works to close gaps in opportunity and representation, ensuring that everyone can participate fully. Unique experiences of participants are valued, and creativity thrives through diverse contributions.
Participatory Art
It offers individuals the opportunity to experience oneself in unusual roles and perspectives.
It challenges traditional hierarchies. It opens new avenues for the creation of new communities forging connection based on shared practices rather than predefined labels. It moves beyond the static discourse of social inclusion, which often reinforces existing stereotypes.
Guidelines
We have selected five practical guidelines based on SENSE. experiences against the background of participation, social inclusion and well-being.
We have seen that Co-Create, Involve & Share, Experience & Explore, Future Making, and Be Diversive & Inclusive are key guidelines on how to make learning more collaborative, creative, and open to everyone.
Guidelines include related useful recommendations to augment social creativity within learning activities. They are not a checklist, but they can serve to focus on working together, celebrating diversity, and being flexible, so that people from all backgrounds can have a voice and be part of shaping the future of education and society.
Recommendations from Guidelines
Co-Create
- Promote active, creative approaches: Incorporate art-infused and citizen science practices, fostering shared ownership of knowledge and learning.
- Ensure clear communication: Maintain transparency so all participants understand the process and goals at every stage.
- Engage the community: Involve local members, parents, and guardians through outreach and activities in public spaces, encouraging active participation.
Involve & Share
- Acknowledge and respect experiences: Embrace horizontal learning approaches where all participants benefit and contribute equally.
- Promote Open Science: Foster transparency and collaboration in research and learning.
- Encourage curiosity: Use hands-on, creative, and playful methods to spark interest and knowledge seeking.
Experience & Explore
- Center the human experience: Focus on the body and human-scale elements in all learning activities, integrating individual experiences with scientific concepts.
- Encourage dialogue: Facilitate conversations between qualitative and quantitative data to foster critical reflection.
- Promote agency and creativity: Activate a sense of agency in learning spaces through art-infused and citizen science practices that reshape perception.
Future Making
- Understand and empower learners: Recognize learner expectations, enhance knowledge ownership, and create spaces for speculation and imagination throughout the learning process.
- Promote transformative practices: Integrate science and technology relevant to learners’ local contexts and provide gender-responsive teaching and social inclusion training for educators.
- Foster diverse connections: Offer mentorship opportunities, include diverse role models, and establish support networks and training for professionals at all career stages.
Be Inclusive
- Diverse and inclusive teaching methods: Employ various participatory strategies to accommodate different learning styles and ensure no one is left behind.
- Community-focused support: Address the needs of communities I a vulnerable situation by collaborating with local organizations and providing necessary resources, while remaining flexible and attentive to participants’ concerns.
- Foster a positive learning environment: Create a safe, no-judgment space that celebrates achievements and assigns different roles to students, promoting engagement and collaboration.
Real-Life Experiences
Take a look at how social creativity comes to life with the SENSE approach.
Gender Roles
The whole activity is based on social creativity and participatory practices. We prioritized giving space to everyone to express their voice.
Heat Walks
Find out what extreme heat means in the city, by listening to what different people have to say. This is based on the idea that temperature is both something that can be felt and something that can be measured. Start by sensing the temperature inside, and then move to the outside.
Favourite Places
The activity provides a place for people to use their experiences, their wishes and their imagination. You can adapt the activity to suit different places and situations. This means you can do it on your own, or as part of a small team, but also as part of a larger group.
Photovoice
This activity helps everyone learn from each other by encouraging students to share what they know and their thoughts.