Speaker
Description
As an artist and arts educator-researcher-academic who is in the middle of a 3rd career, I am passionate about thriving sustainably in a world beset by challenges and changing the unequal pathways into creative subjects and the enablers and barriers to creative subject choices that individuals face throughout and across their paths taken into and through arts educations and industries. In this talk, together, we will interactively trouble which arts creativities we are educating for in school and higher education sectors. I ask, what if primary and secondary schools, along with Higher and Further Education sectors, educated for multiple creativities, away from simple subject dichotomies, allowing for a more vibrant, new and diverse grappling with a myriad of subjects that can lead to a myriad of career choices. I discuss complex issues around creative subject choices from UK and EU perspectives. I draw on evidence that illuminates the inequities of choice and chance around the arts, creative subjects and creative careers. What matters here is a shift in reimagining the possibility of (a) changing what masks compounding inequalities that operate in the educational trajectory and shape who does and does not gain access to arts education and creative higher education; (b) how a plurality of creativities may contribute to broadening accessibility to the arts and creative subject choice, and; (c) why educating for the plurality of arts creativities in schools and higher /further education sectors ,and industries, matter.
CV
Pamela Burnard is an expat Australian Professor of Arts, Creativities and Educations who works at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK. She is an artist, educator, researcher, academic and activist reimagining future learning and career pathways. She has published widely with 25 books and over 150 articles which advance the theory and practice of multiple creativities across education sectors including early years, primary, secondary, further and higher/further education, through to creative and cultural industries. Her current funded projects include ‘Choices, Chances and Transitions around Creative Further and Higher Education’ (funded by The Nuffield Trust), ‘Digital Playgrounds for Music’ (DPfM) (funded by Huddersfield University and ESRC). Her most recent books include ‘Eruptive Research: Changing Landscapes on Research in Teaching and Learning’ (2025, (Brill-i-Sense), ‘Music for Inclusion and Healing in Schools and Beyond: Hip hop, Techno, Grime and More (OUP, 2023), ‘Unlocking Research: Sculpting Creativities in Primary Education’ (Routledge, 2022) and ‘Pluralising Creativities’ (2025, in production). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, (CCT), Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation (ISSCI) and Professor-in-Residence (and Governor) at The University of Cambridge Primary School (UCPS).
