Our Creative Journey featuring Starcatchers projects officially launched
Our Creative Journey, a resource exploring how expressive arts benefit children, was officially launched by Minister for Childcare and Early Years, Maree Todd, on Wednesday, 7 February.
Published by the Care Inspectorate, in collaboration with Starcatchers and a number of other partner organisations, Our Creative Journey aims to promote good practice in all types of early learning and childcare in Scotland.
The resource features a number of Starcatchers projects, including Nickum at Ashgrove Children’s Centre where artists worked with babies 0-2 and their families to explore and develop music and drama ideas together, and practitioners’ experiences of Starcatchers’ Creative Skills training programme.
Carol Main, the Development Officer who supported artists and families through the Nickum project, said: “Working with Starcatchers completely revolutionised my practice. It changed the way I thought about and interacted with babies.”
Heather Armstrong, Starcatchers’ Creative Skills Manager, said: “We understand how creative approaches to the expressive arts can improve outcomes for children and we’ve been delighted to work closely with both local authorities and the Care Inspectorate to support high quality staff development.”
The practice examples in the resource are set out under the GIRFEC wellbeing indicators examples to show how individual outcomes are being met. This fits the approach of the new Health and Social Care Standards, which describe how high quality care should be experienced by an individual. Our Creative Journey models the new Standards by highlighting how expressive arts can positively affect the outcomes of individual children. Inspections of services will increasingly focus more on assessing the impact on children’s outcomes rather than just provider inputs.