Welcome to Leo Chivers from the University of Hertfordshire who joins our e-seminar 
today. I've asked Leo for some details of his research interests to share.

I've also some ideas to share from yesterday's Creativity/Works conference with Andy 
Henon from North East Somerset Arts (NESA), that relate to Alan's Treeworks video and 
to last week's conference in Pozega, Croatia on Creativity in Teacher Education.

You can access the publication Creativity/Works from: 

http://www.jackwhitehead.com/henon/creativityworkslowah.pdf

Robyn, Marie and Andy have also contributed to the publication. I do hope that you will 
download and browse through it. It's a great contribution to the archive of the e-seminar 
and I think you'll see its relevance to our seminar from Andy's statement on page 106:

"For creativity to work you need strong social networks, clarity of communication and 
trust. Trust is a key factor and above all the hardest to mend once broken. The 
recommended approaches to this work are action research based and living educational 
theory is the advanced form of engagement. Here everyone involved in the project is 
exploring their own questions of the kind ‘How do I improve what I am doing’. If everyone 
from participants to organisation support staff are engaged in this key process it is 
possible to effectively improve outcomes for all and to continue questioning core values 
and principles ensuring good and best practice." (p. 106)

As well as Andy's work as lead artist and editor in contributing to this outstanding 
publication I think that you will see Alan's influence with inclusionality being a main 
motivational value:

"The Creativity|WORKS project has engaged with children and young people from early 
years to age 25, introducing a range of arts projects that link in with their families and 
communities, as well as involving them in designing and developing projects that they 
themselves have identified as important.

The project has worked in areas of most need and the widening of access and 
inclusionality has been a main motivational core value and principle in an ongoing action 
research reflective process." (p.2)

On the 30th June 2009 Alan gave a presentation in the Lecture Room of the Linnaean 
Society (see Alan's posting of the 1st October) where Darwin and Wallace's paper on the 
'Origin of Species' was first presented in 1858. In the first 8:06 minutes of Alan's 
presentation at:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wORIPFa2sEk

you can hear Alan explain that he believes Darwin's wonderful insight of the evolutionary 
kinship of all life on earth but questions (see 2:24minutes) Darwin's idea of natural 
selection as the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for survival because of the 
damage the idea is doing to our understandings of the evolutionary kinship of all life on 
earth.

On looking at the images, reading the text and accessing the live urls in Creativity/Works 
it seems to me that Andy's editing has helped to produce an inclusional text that lives the 
value of collaboration. Creativity/Works is I think consistent with the creative insights 
offered by Alan on inclusionality.  

Branko hopes this coming week to post the Proceedings from the Conference in Pozega, 
Croatia on Creativity in Teacher Education at the site of the Educational Journal of Living 
Theories (EJOLTS) at http://ejolts.net/ . When he does this I'll draw your attention to the 
contributions by Marie from her research in Bath and North East Somerset, Margaret and 
Yvonne from their research at Dublin City University and from researchers in Turkey and 
Kenya who also offer their living theories from their practitioner research into improving 
practice and generating knowledge. In one workshop it was a delight to hear three 
Croatian teachers praise Moira's contribution to their learning through her responses to 
their draft action research reports and video-clips of their classroom practices.

A great start to the October 2009 phase of the e-seminar.

Love Jack.