A creative, open, learning society. This is the key goal of KŪRYBINĖS JUNGTYS.
We are a community of creative professionals bringing together professionals from different fields: architects, actors, composers, directors, designers, journalists, illustrators, art curators, dancers, psychologists and many other creative professionals.
Our main fields are education and culture. These areas have a huge impact on one’s intellectual development and creative potential. We believe that the resources for developing creativity in our society lie in schools and theatres, museums and libraries, culture centres and day-care centres.
We build partnerships with schools, cultural organisations and other partners who share our commitment to change.
We are creative practitioners, not theoreticians – we put our knowledge into practice in order to solve challenges, and share our knowledge, skills and experience with educational and cultural organisations.
We are constantly asking ourselves: what can we do to get creativity to work in practice? How can we make sure that cultural and educational organisations encourage societies to be thoughtful, creative, and open to the world and to each other? Our answer: through understanding, purposeful creativity and change.
Together with students, teachers and cultural workers, we study their organisations, reflect on how meaningful their activities are, analyse established practices, create visions for change, experiment, and implement new ways of discovery and creation.
Exploring and creating together changes people’s perceptions, helps develop new skills and processes. Along with its people, the organisation also starts to change.
Creativity as a daily practice.
Skills for the 21st century: creativity, collaboration, openness to change, critical thinking, continuous learning, reflection, interculturalism and interdisciplinarity.
To be an interdisciplinary hub of creative resources that initiates and carries out the development of a creative, learning, open society in Lithuania.
Our activities include: programmes for continuous learning and implementing innovations, training, consultancy, research, and mobilising human, institutional and financial resources for partnership projects. This may be relevant for school communities, cultural organisations, day-care centres, and experts in education and culture.
We can help with:
– understanding what skills, areas of competence and tools could help your organisation achieve its vision and goals;
– creating with purpose, trying out new modes of operation, sharing experiences and discoveries with your colleagues, learning from each other;
– effecting change in yourself and in the organisation you work for. Meeting society’s needs in the best possible way, using your organisation’s resources wisely, with a greater sense of meaning and joy.
It takes time to consistently develop creativity and change the way organisations think and behave, which is why all of our activities, and all the programmes and projects we carry out are of a long-term, continuous nature.
We are currently implementing the following continuous learning and innovation programmes:
THE ART OF CURIOSITY
This is a programme designed for school communities (students, teachers and heads of school), aimed at developing creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and other core competences for the 21st century in both students and teachers. We also help address learning challenges, develop new learning methods and improve the quality of education.
THE ART OF OPENNESS
This is a programme for cultural organisations (museums, theatres, cultural centres, libraries etc.). During the course of it, we aim to strengthen the ability of organisations to understand their audience and increase its diversity, improve its experience, build loyalty, and develop creativity, openness to change and collaboration in creative professionals along with other core competences for the 21st century.
We have implemented the following programmes:
BUILDING CONNECTIONS
This programme for day-care centres (i.e. for children, teens and their educators) took place from 2016 to 2022 and was aimed at promoting creativity among children who are socially at risk, and strengthening their relationships with both themselves and their environment.
DISCOVERED STORIES
This 2022 programme was designed to strengthen the capacity of library staff to engage difficult-to-reach audiences by providing a safe space for them to be creative, independent and curious, and by designing innovative, relevant, engaging educational programmes that put the organisation’s resources to good use.
CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS
Our community began to form in 2011. At that time, we started to implement Creative Partnerships, our nation-wide programme dedicated to creativity education, which initiated certain changes in schools. Over four years, 138 Lithuanian schools, 6 social centres, 1,000 teachers and 10,000 students participated in the programme. Over 200 creative professionals were trained to collaborate with educational and cultural organisations through continuous training and mentoring programmes. They have become the core of our community.
The Creative Partnerships programme was unique in its methodology, which we had adopted over 7 years of cooperation with our colleagues in the UK, creators of a programme of the same name. The programme involves guest professionals from the cultural and creative industries in continuous partnerships with school communities. They are trained for the specific purpose of bringing about change in education quality.
The program was aimed at broadening and diversifying the typical learning process, showing students that learning can be fun and meaningful, and showing teachers that lessons can take place in other spaces than just the classroom and take on a variety of different formats, such as teaching and learning different subjects at the same time.
In the school, we aimed to create a culture of continuous reflection, and a space for understanding oneself and each other. We encouraged the use of new learning methods and the development of skills for the 21st century.
Three major studies have examined the impact and lasting value of the programme. The results showed a positive change in student attitudes towards learning, an increase in creative ability, a diversification of working methods and an increase in professional competence among teachers, also a strengthening of relationships within the community and the emergence of a new learning culture.
KŪRYBINĖS JUNGTYS – CREATIVE CONNECTIONS
In order to improve upon and share the experience that had taught and transformed us so much, we formed the association KŪRYBINĖS JUNGTYS in 2014.
We began to apply the experience, methodology and knowledge we had accumulated not only in schools, but also in cultural organisations and day-care centres.
During our first year, we implemented pilot projects in Ukrainian schools, worked with orphanages and children’s social centres, and with refugees.
In 2016, together with the British Council and our colleagues from Nimble Fish in the UK, we developed a programme for schools titled The Art of Curiosity: Partnerships for Creative Schools.
It combined the Creative Partnerships methodology with the British Council’s concept of core skills for the 21st century.
In 2016, we developed the Art of Openness programme for cultural organisations and the training programme for cultural educators titled Developing Creativity in Culture and Art Education. We began implementing creativity education methodologies in children’s day-care centres through the Building Connections programme.
Between 2016 and 2017, together with our partners and marketing experts VšĮ Artscape, we carried out a study on Lithuanian theatres. Following the study, work was carried out to improve the performance of certain theatres based on marketing expert recommendations, using the Creative Connections methodology.
Together with Knowledge Economy Forum, we conducted a study titled The Role of Creative Professionals in Solving Educational Problems in Schools. Our aim was to raise awareness both in the general public and the academic community about the important role of creative professionals in schools and to provide suggestions for systemically involving creative professionals from various fields in the renewal of the education system.
Since 2018, we have mainly focused on our priorities: partnerships between creative professionals and schools or cultural organisations. We have also continued our partnerships with day-care centres and organised trainings for culture and education professionals.
As of 2018, we are one of a number of cultural organisations whose long-term strategy and programmes are supported and funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.
We are proud of our long-term strategic partnerships with like-minded colleagues who help us build a creative, open, learning society: the British Council in Lithuania, the Lithuanian Council for Culture, the Active Citizens Fund, Vilnius EDU, Vilnius City Council, the Knowledge Economy Forum, Nimble Fish in the UK, Kaunas – European Capital of Culture 2022 and the Swedish International Liberal Centre.