Labs supported in New Brunswick alone has grown significantly from 21 in 2014 to 2382 in 2019.
abruptly cut short in March, there is new hope and opportunity for a reimagined version of their ideas to continue. As this new reality is being co-constructed by school communities, it remains unclear what influence adaptations to new learning conditions during a pandemic will have on creativity in education. Since the media coverage of the pandemic has seen many graphs to help inform the public about the impact of COVID-19, we will rely on the use of a graph as a metaphor to convey the important role of creativity in education in the context of making. Since 2014, many schools in New Brunswick, Canada have joined an international community of educators who are dedicated to providing students with creative opportunities to express their knowledge (Freiman, 2019). Concurrently with this community growth, Brilliant Labs has observed a marked change in the number of schools who have adopted a culture of making through the construction of makerspaces and maker-centred student projects. In fact, the number of student projects Brilliant 70
Brilliant Labs Magazine Revue Labos Créatifs
As we find ourselves discussing a growing number of creative student projects, we often rely on metaphors like a graph with an increasingly steep slope. This is purely a qualitative observation and not one that relates to any specific set of data. There are numerous student project examples that could be used to explain the manifestation of creativity on this curve. What is impossible to know is where the next point on this metaphorical curve will be in the next few months.There are necessary pandemic constraints that may lead some readers to think that the curve could dip downwards. The restrictions on material sharing, classroom occupancy and simply how close any one student can be to anyone else, lead to conversations and concerns that for right now, have no end. Like many of you, many of our conversations this summer were filled with speculation concerning what will happen to this trend in creativity when students return in September. What was amazing (yet unsurprising given the passionate dedication our teachers contribute to their profession), was how easy it was for us for our speculation to explore scenarios in which creativity wouldn’t only be
present in our schools but could indeed increase. We were inspired by how our social media streams were inundated with examples of how students and teachers were expressing their resilient selves and remaining creative regardless of constraint. We are further inspired by the multiple local and global initiatives of significant merit that could have their own creative metaphor. Even though most of what lies below is based on speculation, it is plausible to add some scientific flavour to what is an optimistic forecast. Extending our curve metaphor a little further, below we present a brief portrayal of what we call A Coordinate System of Makers’ Creative Endeavors. This system comes from our research data and helps us to identify two main axes through which we speculate maker educators will embrace a new reality while
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