TRAINING FOR DESIGN FACULTY FROM 9 COUNTRIES ΟΝ COLLABORATION AND CREATIVITY

Flow Athens offered a community building and creativity training workshop for Design Faculty, partners at the Erasmus Plus project DesignSTEM.
The workshop participants were 22 design college professors and high-school teachers from 9 countries: Finland, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Slovenia, Estonia, Italy, Portugal and Greece.

The training focused on building community and facilitating streamlined collaboration within this geographically dispersed team. The participants explored their relationship to their creativity, experienced ways to build a safe learning environment and learned new techniques to weave arts into classroom. The workshop is based on the Creative Community Model of Partners for Youth Empowerment.

The objective of the Erasmus+ project DesignSTEM is to contribute to devising, building and disseminating work methods and resources for educators and learners in the fields of design and STEM.

95% of the participants were “extremely” or “very satisfied" with the training

86% of the participants were taught things that will be “completely” or “a good amount” useful in their work

95% of the participants learned ways to build a safe learning environment 

95% of the participants would recommend this workshop to colleagues and friends

Here are some testimonials from the workshop participants:

“It was great. Really nice human touch and pace”

“It works perfectly as an example for supporting any creative thing for a classroom”

“Freedom, safety, well-guided and structured learning environment …fun!”
 
“It helped me to put scattered ideas and methods together into a coherent structure. It’s gonna be helping me to find my true self.”

“Can be a life-changing experience”

“The most important thing I learned in this training is that trust and belief in the process give good results”

“I would recommend this workshop to colleagues and friends because it’s fun and learning full”

“I learned how to make the environment safe during these kind of activities, specially for students that get easily anxious”

“I felt like everything was thought through and I really enjoyed myself”

“It gave new inspiration and I learned new learning techniques”
“The most important things I discovered in this training is that I was on the right path of teaching already, but also it gave me better knowledge of adapting the methods and tools into teaching process”

“Every teacher needs that kind of experience!”

“It was a relaxed workshop. A nice way to work together. An other way to use for instance for brainstorm.”

“The most important things I learned in this training are the little creative risks that you need to take to support participants.”

“The most important thing I discovered in this training is giving place / persona to creativity”

“The most important things I learned in this training were: 
•    Direction of learning process through small steps
•    Emotions into lessons
•    Equality of contributions, regardless of their quality”

“This kind of workshop transforms totally the process of teaching”

“The most important thing I learned in this training was to build a safe learning environment”

“It helps to improve the way of teaching”

“Estonian teachers don’t use their creativity at work in classes. Teaching could be more exciting”

“The most important things I discovered in this training was how to mix different creativity methods and to divide exercise/learning process to smaller pieces”

“The most important things I discovered in this training were: imagination, creativity, collaboration.”

“The most important thing I learned in this training was to use all your 5 senses, anytime, everywhere, with everybody”

“I discovered how important variety, instruction, recap and creativity are to learning. Things I will try out.”

“Excellent organization, delivery, execution, throughout.”

“The most important thing I learned in this training was to use my intuitive imagination more and to trust her better…”

“I would recommend this workshop to colleagues and friends because it inspires!”