Learning & Loans

Conclusion: 73% (19) of 26 observations demonstrated teachers and students harnessing creative processes in learning through loans. The creative process most employed by schools was art work (42%). This involved using the loans as a focal point that inspired students' own work in a variety of media. Creative guesswork (32%), creative writing (16%) and creative play (10%) were also employed.

This finding complements the teacher interviews which related "best lessons" with loans to creative activities such as drama, 3D art and creative writing.

Key: A "user" is a school that already uses the loan service. A "non-user" is a school that does not currently use the loan service.

· Creative drawing/art work: 8
1. School F: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
The students asked the teacher if they could draw. Some of the students drew some amazing outlines of the loans which had incredibly complex shapes. Why they decided to do an outline and not draw the parts I don't know.

2. School I: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Yes. The students produced artistic drawings of the loans with coloured pencils. They also made their own clay tiles with patterns. They wanted to make their own biscuit tins but didn't have enough time.

3. School L: Non-user: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Some of the observational drawings were particularly artistic rather than diagrammatic.

One student made a personal link between the model of Stephenson's Rocket and the musical Oliver Twist which they had watched some weeks earlier:
Student: "I saw a model like that in the video of "Oliver"; we watched it before we produced our own musical of Oliver.

4. School N: Non-user: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
The students did pastel drawings of the shells with artistic intent.

5. School Q: User: Secondary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Yes. The work was differentiated according to each individual child's ability:
· colouring a landscape from a computer printout;
· drawing and using colour to illustrate a simple landscape on another piece of paper; drawing and using colour to create a similar composition to the colour photocopies of the prints;
· colour matching by applying pastels to a black and white photocopy of the colour photocopies;
· using a picture as a starting point for a student's own pastel composition of a landscape;
and generally using colour to cover a space

6. School R: User: Secondary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
The Javanese shadow puppet loans inspired batik and print 'ceremonial wall hangings'.

7. School S: User: Secondary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Yes. Not only in the production of pastel drawings, multi-media compositions and pencil drawings, but also in the written responses which involved answering questions such as:
"Imagine you could step into the picture. How do you think you would feel?"
Three responses to this question included:
· Cold;
· I would feel lonely and still;
· I would be angry and cold.

8. School U: User: Secondary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
The aim of the lesson was a creative one - to use the artefacts as a stimulus for Art.

· Creative thinking/hypotheses: 6
9. School B: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Yes. Because the students did not know what their objects were, it forced them to do some creative thinking based on what they could see:
Teacher: "What could it be?"
Student: "Something crushed up could be inside. You screw the top on then refill it."
Student: "You could keep pepper or sugar in it."
Student: "You could shake it out."
Student: "You could put a candle inside it and then smoke would come out the top."

10. School D: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Some of the guesses that the students made about the identity of the artefacts were very creative. This is one response to a decorative oil lamp from Pakistan:
Student: "Oh! It's a fag holder! You put the cigarette in here and the smoke comes out there. Am I right?"

11. School G: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
The loans stimulated the imagination insofar as they helped the students identify closely with the WWII time period. The loans reminded the 2 boys who were working with the loans of their visit to Anne Frank's home in Amsterdam. "We learned what it was like in their world" one of them said.

12. School W: Non- user: Secondary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Yes. One student said of the trappers' hat bead pattern "It looks like a bear's face." Another asked of the moccasins "Is this Adidas? (for Native Americans)". The jacket really took their imagination especially when they noted a "bullet hole" which they believed had been made by the cavalry. When they saw the saddle under perspex, they mistakenly took it for "some kid's coffin!" until they had a closer look. I would say that they balanced on the edge of their imagination throughout the exploratory time.

13. School X: Non-user: Secondary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
The students wondered about where the artefacts came from and also how they could be used for criminal gain!

Student: "How do you get stuff like this?"
Student: "Its somebody's job to look for it."

Student: "How much are the coins worth?"
Student: "You should make fakes and make a business of it."

14. School Y: Non-user: Secondary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Only insofar as the artefacts made them make creative guesses about them:
Teacher: "Why would they stick that (medieval wax seal) on to a letter?"
Student: "To say they're going into battle."

· Creative writing: 3
15. School C: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Yes - particularly in response to the owls. This is an example of creative writing, a letter written from an owl's perspective, written after focusing on the two owl loans:

Dear Jim,
I'm flying and the weather is beautiful. The butterflies are muttering. The birds are tweeting. The world is wonderful. Deer are clopping along the woods. The fish under water are very colourful. They are goldfish. Some are multi-coloured. I'm feeling really tingly inside and really happy outside.
From Blink

16. School H: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Yes. The loans were used as a focus for a story.

17. School M: Non-user: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Yes. Under the teacher's guidance the students had to do one of the following:
· "Imagine you are the driver (of the 1930's tram). Write a story about a day in your life."
· "Who did the trunk belong to? Imagine that person. Who were they and where did they live? Write a story about the two of them set in the 1930's."
· "Who did the clothing belong to? Imagine them. Who were they and where did they live? Write a story about the two of them set in the 1930's."

· Creative play: 2
18. School A: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Yes. This is an example of a few minutes of one girl's play with the knitted farm:
…She went over to the knitted landscape and picked up a few of the knitted ducks. She put the ducks under the knitted bridge. Then she took them out and put them under the bridge again. She picked up one of the ducks and made it "swim" up and down the knitted stream. At this point, she picked up one of the knitted horses from under the chair and made it drink at the water's edge. It went back under the chair after this…She got down and retrieved the knitted sheep from its place under the chair and let it have a drink at the edge of the water. Then she walked it around the knitted fields. She picked up the knitted scarecrow man and squeezed him under the bridge. Then she put him on top of the bridge. After she took him off, she looked closely at the bridge and pressed it down with her hand.

19. School K: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
The students responded in a playful way when handling the alien Kenyan artefacts. They almost used them like toys or props in order to discover their meaning and use:

• · Action: The student with the Masai necklace at this point decides to put it on his head like a halo.
  
• · Action: A student rubs the spirit ship hair along their mouth to feel it. There seems generally to be a lot of "fun" associated with the spirit whip. another student holds the earrings up to her ears and sways her head.
  
• · Action: A student rubs their fingers round the Masai beads; another runs their fingers through the spirit whip; a student closely examines one earring, holds it up to her ear, smiles and shows it to a friend. They are still all keen to hold the whip. A student puts it up to her hair; the boy next to her does this and makes a funny face; the boy next to him copies him.
  

Not at time of my visit: 6
20. School E: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Not at the time of my visit.

21. School J: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
No.

22. School P: Non-user: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
I was not shown a lesson.

23. School T: User: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
I did not see a handling session.

24. School V: Non-user: Secondary with Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
I did not see the loans stimulate creativity during my visit.

25. School Z: Non-user: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
Not hugely. One student did think that one of the shoes was for a "giant" though.

· Not at all: 1
26. School O: Non-user: Primary
Did the loans stimulate the imagination and encourage creativity?
There was a complete lack of imagination in the teaching staff who did not use the loans at all. They did not use the kingfisher or water vole even though they were studying Rivers; not did they use the narwhal tusk (unicorn horn) or Egyptian artefacts even though they were looking for a stimulus for creative writing.