Welcome to our arts special

“We stigmatise mistakes. And we’re now running national educational systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make — and the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.”

In this issue we explore the role of creativity in schools, why it matters and how children and young people benefit from participating in art, music, dance, drama and making things. We spoke to people who have enjoyed successful careers in the arts and they all talk about the power of creative subjects to inspire children who have disengaged from the narrow confines of academic study. The arts also offer alternative routes into the study of “core” subjects, like the school in Plymouth where drawing and painting were seen as an equally valid way of exploring a subject as writing about it. One thing “creative people” have in common is that they are fans of mistakes, seeing them as a gateway to learning, often leading to deeper understanding, the discovery of something completely new or a realisation that you would never have had if things had gone as expected. Many a successful invention has come about because plan A went “wrong”. A school system that educates people only to get things right and to avoid ever making mistakes is perhaps the biggest mistake of all. As Dr Millan Sachania, headmaster of Streatham and Clapham High School in London, wrote in a recent letter to The Times: “Learning about calculus and covalent bonding is important. Yet our youngsters cannot emerge from the pandemic in good spirits without engaging with music, literature and the creative and performing arts. As such, these subjects are the fount of mental health and the fruitful appreciation of the human condition.”