‘Different journeys at different speeds’: Young People, Risk and the Challenge of Creative Learning

Abstract

Young people's experience of education in a ‘risk society’ is characterised by a terrain of ‘initiative overload’ which appears to make the routes through which young people are seeking to plot a path evermore perilous. This article is concerned with the impact of creative learning on young people, as represented by the UK Government's initiative Creative Partnerships in Durham Sunderland. The article considers the degree to which creative learning can help young people prepare for the realities of an uncertain future. It is argued that if young people are to be as reflexive as both the economy and transitions demand, then the market-oriented system of education deployed in England needs to be far more reflexive and biographically oriented than is currently the case, and that creative learning could play a key role in this process.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Helen Chimirri-Russell, Richard Dodgson and Anna Heyman for their contributions to the development of the Durham Sunderland Creative Partnerships research programme and Lorna Fulton for her advice and support.