Prelude - A game of discovery and learning.

Creative Places + Spaces

October 28, 2009

Creative Places + Spaces is an annual Toronto-based Conference designed to ‘inspire, empower, and connect thinkers, policymakers and practitioners working to build vibrant, dynamic, sustainable and creative places’ The conference comissioned several films about “cutting edge cross-sector collaborations … that are catalysts for community transformation, problem-solving or idea generation.” One of the films showcased Heliotrope’s collaboration with Classroom Connections and the Bigstone Cree First Nation Education Authority, and Resiliency Initiatives.

Our collaboration is pioneering what we call a 21C Learning Community Toolkit. This involves an integrated used of two tools, a resiliency assessment protocol and Prelude. More tools will be added as the project evolves. “Learning is essentially a social and community process. It is therefore at the community level that active, transformative learning can be promoted in every sector and acquired by every individual. It is in learning communities – where all forms of learning are fostered, integrated, and celebrated” [ibid.]. The 21C Learning Community Toolkit is designed to help stakeholders enhance skills and capacities that are key to community life long learning and wellbeing. These include: resiliency, self-knowledge, empathy, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration. They are widely acknowledged as complements to ‘hard skills’, like text literary and numeracy. Indeed, these ‘soft skills’ are widely seen as crucial to success and wellbeing, for students, trainees, and employees alike. However the current gap in education and training is linked to increasing rates of dropouts, bullying, substance abuse, and absenteeism in communities across Canada.  As such, “the acquisition of new knowledge, skills, attitudes and values is the only guarantee that old, dysfunctional habits are replaced by new ways of responding to and managing change in the 21st Century knowledge based economy and society” [ibid]. The 21C Learning Community Toolkit may be used – whole or in part – in a wide range of community settings and with an equally wide range of participants.