These days, there’s a lot of pressure on our children to get the best grades, learn to read and write the fastest and become a maths whizz before they can walk. But what about creativity? Creativity is probably the most important thing for a child’s development. A strong sense of creativity, that has been nurtured through many years, helps you to deal well with uncertainty, come up with the brightest ideas and find unexpected solutions to problems.
Creativity is proven to help a child’s brain development, as well as help them thrive in the world. Creative expression helps children discover and deal with their feelings, and fosters their psychological development by helping them try new things. A chronic barrier to success is perfectionism and a fear of failure. Being creative helps overcome this issue, because you discover that so-called mistakes can lead to new and wonderful avenues.
Creative children take better risks in life and find ways to solve problems that foster their healthy development. Let’s take a look at some of the best places you can send your kids to foster their creativity.
Where should you send your child to foster their creativity?
Some of the best places to send your kids to foster their creativity are Holiday Academy Forest School Camp, Oxford Royale Academy and Nottingham Trent University Summer Schools. You should also look at The Story Room Writing Clubs, and Global Art Classroom.
From wondrous woodlands filled with creative promise, to extraordinary courses in filmmaking and car design, these courses are perfect for building creativity. Let’s take a deep dive into how these places can unleash your child’s creativity.
Holiday Academy Forest School Camp
In our tech-infused, digital world it is honestly really hard to keep your kids from having too much screen time. There’s something really special about your child connecting with a woodland environment, and fostering their creativity through nature.
Holiday Academy’s Forest School Camp offers regular Forest Schools for ages 8-12, 6-7 and 3-6s, and these are perfect for helping your child connect to the natural environment, problem solve and enjoy being part of a team.
Forest School Camp puts a big focus on achievable tasks, so your child will grow their creativity in settings that build their confidence. Forest School Camp activities will build your child’s emotional resilience and intelligence, and spark self-esteem and creativity in the beauty of nature. Play and activities include:
- den / shelter building
- fire lighting
- outdoor cooking
- team games
- woodwork
- tool use
- nature-based craft.
In the woodland area of Forest School Camp, your child will discover a creative wonderland. The outdoors is an infinite source of smells, textures, sounds and tastes.
Forest School Camp is built on the Forest School Ethos, which believes in children’s right to play and the right to access manageable risk and the stunning beauty of the natural world. These settings will unleash your child’s natural creativity, as they engage with their peers and discover their potential through stimulating outdoors play.
Oxford Royale Academy Summer School
At Oxford Royale Academy (ORA), your child will have the chance to do rare creative courses, and use professional-level creative equipment that they can’t access anywhere else. Oxford Royale Academy is a summer school which offers a truly authentic experience of life at the University of Oxford, for students aged 8-19+. Let’s look at just a few of ORA’s creative courses.
Film Academy
ORA’s Film Academy course gives your child the chance to shoot like a professional filmmaker, and create their own film with top industry equipment. With access to top experts in film and the chance to learn professional directing, producing and editing skills, Film Academy is an unrivalled opportunity for your budding filmmaker to unleash their creativity.
Photography and Sketching
Your child will have some of the best creative experiences of their life at ORA’s Photography and Sketching course. They will develop a keen photographer’s eye, and snap the world-famous Dreaming Spires of Oxford with top of the line cameras. ORA’s Photography and Sketching course helps your child develop the creative intuition to judge a scene’s artistic and photographic potential, as they sketch some of Oxford’s most beautiful scenes, from gothic spires to the river that curls round Christ Church Meadows.
Creative Writing
If your child loves thinking up stories and reading, writing and creating, ORA’s Creative Writing course would be a great fit for them. They’ll learn to write compelling characters, create great plots and build suspense. They’ll gain resilience from sharing their creative writing with their peers, and use constructive criticism to grow creatively.
The environment of Oxford Royale Academy seems to have been hand crafted for fostering children’s creativity. Set in the beautiful and historic colleges of the University of Oxford (the top university in the world), your child with study, sleep and dine in the prestigious spaces that launched some of the world’s most brilliant creatives.
If you’re unsure about the Covid-19 situation, don’t worry. Oxford Royale Academy also offers a prestigious online programme.
Nottingham Trent University Summer Schools
If you’re looking for some truly exciting and unusual courses to foster your child’s creativity, look no further than Nottingham Trent University Summer Schools.
Nottingham Trent University (NTU) offer such a wide range of creative courses for next summer that you’ll be hard pressed to choose just one for your child. The university offers short creative courses for 12-14 year olds, and 15-17 year olds (if you have a child 18 years old and above, they can pick an adult course). Let’s dive into just a few.
Animation
NTU’s Animation course is a truly unique opportunity for your child to learn digital animation. They’ll have access to Adobe Animate CC and Wacom Cintiq tablets. Your child will learn all the fundamentals of animation, including how to create animated ball bounces and walk cycles. They’ll pour their creativity into building their own, short animation with special, personal touches.
Car Design
This NTU course introduces your child to the amazing world of car design. Your child will develop their creative thinking to design their own car with a distinctive personality. They’ll consider the way it should look, how it should be shaped and what features it should have. Your child will take their creative ideas from sketches into perspective drawings that could be used by 3D modellers in the car design process. Your child will match creativity with technical design, as they learn how form and style link to the function of a vehicle, and understand proportions and perspectives.
Concept Art for Game Design
This course will introduce your child to top of the line concept art techniques, and teach them to create successful characters and environments for game design. They’ll have access to Adobe Creative Suite and Wacom tablets.
Your child will unleash their creativity as they create a world of their own. They’ll produce a personal approach to either real-life, fantasy, sci-fi or cartoon concept art. In terms of drawing skills, your child will explore everything from hand drawing, collage and digital drawing techniques. They’ll bring their concept to life through making their character 3D on a screen, and using Adobe Photoshop to draw and pain their ideas.
The Story Room Writing Clubs
Whether your child is a confident budding author or has difficulty getting their ideas written down, The Story Room’s Writing Clubs are perfect for fostering creativity.
The Story Room’s relaxed workshops nurture young writers’ creativity, and help them develop their writing abilities. The classes are run by tutors and workshop leaders who are caring and inspiring, and who are passionate about the benefits of writing for everyone.
The Story Room offer a variety of clubs for children aged 5-16 years old. These include:
- holiday workshops
- term-time writing clubs
- bespoke writing workshops
- book clubs
- children’s birthday parties.
For example, in October 2020 The Story Room ran creative writing sessions on topics from witches, wizards and magicians, to the vibrant beauty of autumn.
Currently, The Story Room writing classes are all online, which means you can foster your child’s creativity no matter what the current situation is with Covid-19.
Global Art Classroom
Global Art Classroom offers your child a fun and inspirational way to create stunning works of art. All the classes are online, so your child can express their creativity from the comfort of their own home. Global Art Classroom workshops are the perfect way to entertain your child constructively and nurture their creativity during the pandemic.
Whether or not your child feels that they are ‘good’ at art, Global Art Classroom designs their projects to inspire confidence and success in children. Your child can enjoy a variety of creative art courses of all types, including:
- Drawing Lessons
- Oil Pastel Projects
- Watercolour Painting Projects
- Collage Art Projects
- Mixed Media Projects
Your child could be learning how to draw a beautiful monarch butterfly in one course, and collage a newspaper kitty cat in another.
We’ve now looked at five places to send your kids to foster their creativity, and we hope you’ve been inspired by it. As Einstein said, “Creativity is Intelligence Having Fun”, and your child will blossom in all aspects of their life through the creative experiences you give them.
Luciana joined our team as a mum blogger in 2020. A dedicated mum to a lively daughter and a dog, Luna, Luciana brings authenticity and passion to every post. Her expertise in parenting and lifestyle topics offers practical, relatable advice for real-life situations.