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POWERED UP - AN INSIGHT BY THE IN GROUP

Lucy Sicks, the Founder of LIFEbeat, a charity specialising in using the arts and creativity to support young people’s wellbeing and personal growth, agrees. “Creativity is not just a nice ‘add-on’ to other academic subjects,” she says. “It is a foundational skill and a way of approaching the world that should underpin the study of all subjects.” Many reports have shown the undeniable benefits of creativity. In 2016, a study in The Journal of Positive Psychology found that spending time on creative goals can elevate a person’s mood that day. Research commissioned by BBC Arts in 2019 also found that taking part in creative activities helps people manage stress and find the mental space to address problems in their lives. The World Health Organisation has found overwhelming evidence connecting arts of all kinds to improved wellbeing and health. But, the pressures that some schools face can

make it harder to find the capacity to incorporate the arts into a student’s day. “Sadly, as schools face budget cuts and increasing pressure to perform in exam league tables, creativity is becoming less and less prioritised within our education system,” Sicks adds. Sicks says LIFEbeat has “seen firsthand” how creativity can have “extraordinary benefits” on a young person’s wellbeing. “Our work is proven to build self-esteem, emotional literacy and resilience, empowering young people and nurturing their self-belief to overcome challenges. Teachers, family and the young people themselves tell us that they feel happier, more connected and energised after attending LIFEbeat programmes. We consistently see positive shifts on the widely respected Warwick Edinburgh mental wellbeing scale for young people who have been through our programmes.”

Article written by Precious Adesina, journalist, public speaker and radio presenter.

In the sixties, realising the importance of creative thinking amongst their space programme engineers and scientists, NASA worked with scientist George Land to devise a creativity test. The results were as heartbreaking as they were revealing.

At age 5, a staggering 98% of children display a ‘genius level’ of creativity. By age 10, that number drops to just 30%, by age 15, it is down to 12%, and by adulthood, just 2% of us will register at ‘genius level.’ Last year, the Labour Party said that schools in the UK face a ‘creativity crisis’ due to the continued fall in arts funding. The party claimed that government allocation for music and the arts worked out at only £9.40 per child each year. But, the decline of the arts in education has been an issue for at least a decade. In 2020, The Stage, a weekly newspaper covering the entertainment industry, reported a 37% decrease in the number of students entered for creative subjects at GCSE level since 2010 – a statistic that disproportionately affects students from state schools. “The danger at present is that it’s currently much easier to get a broader, more creative education if you have the money to go to a private school,” Sir Nicholas Serota, the chair of Arts Council England, told Sky News in 2019 after the release of a report in collaboration with Durham University concluded that creativity should be instilled in everyday school life. “There are great state schools being well led that do this work, but what we want to see is a much larger number of schools in the state system able to do this.”

CREDIT - PEXELS