Throughout the 2010/2011 academic year, the College has been working with the Creative Partnerships learning programme to hold creative workshops that aim to inspire students and help them learn. In early 2011 the College received a grant from Arts Council England providing the opportunity for staff and students to work with several creative organisations such as, Fox Create, Broadway and Babbling Vagabonds Storytelling Theatre.

Looking at feedback from the latest Ofsted report, the College decided to use the grant to organise a cross-college event with learning as its main focus. The Creative Partnerships Day has been designed to get staff and students thinking about all aspects of learning; what learning is, how we learn, how we will be learning in the future.

Creative workshops were held throughout the academic year by the Babbling Vagabonds Storytelling Theatre in preparation for the day. Two students from each Tutor Base attended the workshops aimed at inspiring them about learning and providing vital coaching skills which they could use to pass on their knowledge to fellow students.

Broadway, a Nottingham based independent cinema, was asked to support the day by creating an introductory video. This documentary style video launched the concept of the day and a second video saw Steve Whiteley, Executive Principal of Landau Forte Charitable Trust, set the College a challenge:

Each group is to produce a mission statement about learning. What is learning? Where might it take place? What might it look like? How would we do it?

The aim of the day is to share the mission statements with everyone at the College with the view of coming together to reach a single mission statement. This will serve as a reminder about what learning could and should be, how it’s done and where it takes place.

Students will spend the day with their Tutor Bases where each division will be given a different question to base their mission statement on:

• What is learning?
• How do we learn?
• How do we know we have learnt something?
• How would you like to learn in the future?

Throughout the day workshops will be held in and around College, with some being supported by Derby City Council, which will aid staff and students in their challenge to create a mission statement and get them thinking about learning. Once the mission statement has been created, the Tutor Bases will continue working as a team to create a visual representation of their mission statement.

The day will be rounded off at the Cathedral Green in Derby where each Tutor Base will have 20 seconds to display their visual representation of the question they were given. A video camera will be located on a crane to capture each Tutor Base's work. The day will finish with all the Tutor Bases uniting to display their visual mission statements connected to a huge brain on the Green.