‘Inspiring Creativity in Young People’ Evaluation Roundtable
One of the key priorities for Paul Hamlyn Foundation is to improve the understanding of the difference the arts can make to people’s lives and communities. Therefore, we were very pleased to host the ‘Inspiring Creativity in Young People’ roundtable discussion on 4 February. This event brought together ten organisations to explore learning from an independent evaluation of the Ministry of Stories’ (MOS) work with young people, conducted by the UCL Institute of Education.
MOS is a Paul Hamlyn grantee organisation, which aims to build young people’s creativity and motivation through writing. They provide writing workshops in disadvantaged areas and a publishing platform through which young people’s voices and stories can be heard.
The UCL Institute of Education has recently concluded a three-year longitudinal study of the MOS’ work; including an evaluation of their impact on creativity and attainment. This roundtable discussion brought together peers in the field of young people’s creativity and writing to share the results of the study and explore how each might better evaluate their own successes.
The UCL research showed that MOS’ work is making an extremely important contribution to the creativity and motivation for writing of the young people it works with in London. In particular, there is powerful evidence to show that young people’s creativity, expressed through writing, was enhanced as a result of MOS’ methodologies. Overall, the research revealed consistently high motivation for writing reported by the young people as a result of MOS’ approach.
The full UCL Institute of Education evaluation report can be found here.