Planning your creative educational project: why and how?

Why? Because planning…

• gives perspective
• gives directions
• helps identify goals
• uncovers problems

How? In our “Your educational project: Goal, Plan, Action!” module, you will be introduced and test yourself the Creative Project Canvas.

This reflection tool will help you map and plan different ideas for work, projects and programmes, stimulate your thinking about the different aspects of your project and visualise how your ideas might connect with people that might want to see, engage or participate in your work.

The Creative project Canvas will help you plan your creative educational project by exploring…

• its VALUE to yourself and other communities and how you obtain the benefit of providing that value.
• the benefits of BELONGING TO NETWORKS you are currently part of or you might join that can provide you with contacts and resources to create, develop, produce and promote your project.
• the ACTIVITIES AND WORK of your project e.g. research, preparation, production, marketing, touring, workshops, reviewing.
• the EQUIPMENT, MATERIALS AND TIME that it requires and the time for each process giving the whole time requirement.
• who can be CHAMPIONS AND CRITICS of your project, i.e. those who can serve you as a guide and champion or improve aspects of your work as a critic and therefore help you to develop and strengthen your own artistic/creative voice.
• ways of ACCESS FOR OTHERS, i.e. how local and other communities can access your work.
• ways of GETTING FEEDBACK, i.e. current and potential tools and methods to get feedback about your work/project from everyone who gets or might get involved with it.
• its SHORT TERM GAINS AND LOSSES as well as LONG TERM REWARDS.

The initial idea spurring the development of an education project may have come from a variety of places, ideas, needs and personal beliefs. In the enthusiasm and excitement of the moment, however, it often happens that not all projects are timely or appropriate.

The major success of an educational project lies in critically examining the viability of an idea, analising, visualising and implementing its measurable, achievable and time-bound goals. That is why project development requires a commitment to a systematic, iterative process of assessment, design, implementation and evaluation, as it is a cyclical process in which the results of one phase become the starting products for the next phase.

The purpose of educational planning is to ensure the systematic accomplishment of a series of activities leading toward the achievement of set objectives of educational development.

All envisaged practical activities and strategies that Materahub will carry out and deliver during the training session for “Your educational project: Goal, Plan, Action!” module aim at guiding learners through the main steps of action needed to design an exciting and educational experience:

• What are the activities to be undertaken?
• Who will undertake them?
• What resources will they consume?
• What targets will they accomplish?
• How will the success of these activities be evaluated?

The process of working out detailed answers for these questions so as to help implement the plan is the actual completion and elaboration of the innovative strategic visual framework Creative Project Canvas, which, just like an artist’s canvas, is a place to turn your educational project and creative inspiration into reality and share it with your team, audience and learners.

The Creative Project Canvas is a strategic visual framework and reflection tool made up of 9 themes including questions to help you clarify and reflect on your creative educational project. By answering them, you will be able to outline the key steps in your educational projects planning process: set project goal/s, evaluate time and resources available, design methods to get feedback and review. The central part of the Creative Project Canvas is the CORE of your project, the left part is the practical part of your project, the right part is the external perception of your project and the bottom part is the plans of your project.

Get Close to Opera is going to run a training week in February 2019 about Opera through #multipleintelligences #womenrights #disabilities and #immigrantinclusion. It will take place in the beautiful UNESCO city of Matera, in the south of Italy, that will be the European Capital of Culture in 2019.

The module developed by Materahub (Italy) will be “Your educational project: Goal, Plan, Action!”.
If you work in the field of Opera Education, participate in the #GCTO Training Week!