How truly creative are we?

Building on from the European Year of Creativity and Innovation , NUI Galway is making preparations for the 2010 Galway Symposium on Higher Education. The theme for the even is "Creativity, Imagination and Innovation in HE" and it will be held on our Galway campus on June 10th and 11th 2010. More information about the event including keynotes, workshops etc, will be posted in the early new year, but you might like to pencil in the dates anyway!  

However, this isn't just advertising (after all we hate the fact that our dates clash with the NMC summer conference!!!!), what we're also interested in doing is trying to capture examples of really creative initiatives in higher education settings whether these are innovative new curricular designs/programmes or approaches to teaching and learning which really promote more active, engaged learning and nurture students' creative skills.

Naturally, NMC is dedicated to "sparking innovative learning & creativity" as we can see from the strapline, but what would you rate as truly innovative in the projects, partner activities etc? What's your take on creativity? To what extent do institutions and strategy documents buy in to many of the creativity myths that Sawyer  and others identify?

We'd love to hear your views and to establish a real conversation about these topics and are looking at using one of our blog-sites to host such. In the meantime, feel free to jot down and firm up your ideas and suggestions, and perhaps even muse on the possibility of joining us  in June.