Students arrive in our classrooms with extraordinary creative ambition. Across the arts, technology and design, young people bring a wealth of creative experience with them; real, sustained ambition that’s ours to nurture and grow. The question I find most exciting as a teacher isn’t how to spark that ambition, but how to give it the best possible conditions to flourish.
That’s been the heart of my own teaching practice: building on the creative life a student already brings, rather than starting from scratch. I want to share what’s worked, because I think it has real potential for how we support every student’s ambitions across every creative subject.
Boys and girls often bring that ambition to different subjects. Girls make up close to 80% of A-level Art and Design entries and around two-thirds of GCSE drama entries, while boys are more strongly represented in Computing and Design & Technology. Rather than reading this as an imbalance to correct, I see it as a starting point: every subject already has real enthusiasm to build on, whoever is bringing it, and the aim is simply to make sure every student, in every creative subject, finds that same depth of encouragement.
Meet ambition where it already lives
Long before any student sits a GCSE option form, they’ve usually built a creative life of their own; making playlists, editing videos, designing for games, sketching, styling, writing. Research into young people’s musical lives has found that the vast majority engage with music every week, and a striking number are already creating it, teaching themselves or learning from friends, entirely outside school. That’s a gift for any teacher: real creative fluency, ready to be built on.
It’s an especially rich seam in the more technical creative subjects, like Design & Technology and Computing, where the crossover with skills students are already building for themselves – in design apps, video editing, digital tools – is enormous. Naming that connection explicitly, and showing a student how their existing skill translates directly into the subject, is one of the most effective things a teacher can do to help ambition take root.
I think of a student who arrived in a Music Technology lesson utterly obsessed with an album he’d found: Christopher O’Riley’s piano reworkings of Radiohead songs. Rather than setting that enthusiasm aside for the scheme of work, I built a project around it; using the album as the basis for transcription work, getting him to work out melodic lines and harmonic choices by ear, then apply the same techniques to his own arranging. The technical skills he needed – transcription, harmonic analysis, structuring an arrangement – were exactly what the specification demanded, but they arrived through music he was already captivated by, rather than material handed down cold. Multiply that student by every classroom, every subject, and the scale of what’s possiblebecomes clear.
Practical ways to nurture it
The approach I come back to again and again is working outward: personal interest first, then the wider subject. A studnt lights up fastest when they see their own taste reflected in what they’re asked to make, and that early confidence carries them through the harder, less familiar material that follows.
Language matters too. Using open, inclusive terms – everyone is a musician, an artist, a maker from day one – helps every student feel the subject already belongs to them, rather than something they have to earn their way into.
Confidence is built early
None of this works without genuine confidence, and that’s built through how we assess as much as how we teach. Strong provision earlier in school – where pupils get to experiment and take creative risks well before subject choices are made – does more to nurture lasting ambition than anything offered at the point of choice itself. Give a student years of feeling capable, and choosing the subject at fourteen becomes a natural next step rather than a leap of faith.
Ways schools can build on this
- Ask what students are already creating, in and outside school, and use it as the starting point for new learning.
- Use inclusive, welcoming language – musician, artist, maker – from the very first lesson.
- Invest in the years before choices are made. Ambition at fourteen is nurtured at eleven and twelve.
- Make the destination visible. Showing students where a creative subject leads – into design, games, engineering, performance – helps ambition turn into a clear and exciting path.
Building on real strength
Every student brings remarkable creative ambition into our schools. The privilege for teachers is nurturing it; giving it room to grow, connecting it to new subjects and skills, and helping every pupil see their own creativity reflected in the classroom from day one.
Steven Berryman 
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