The creative ecology programme of workshops, projects and training aims to support people of all ages in exploring their creativity and their role within their local and wider environment.

Within creative ecology, James Aldridge works in partnership with pre-schools and nurseries to enable children and adults to make the best use of local outdoor space, and natural/recycled materials, to explore issues and ideas of relevance to the children through sensory and imaginative play.

James has acted as a mentor on early years arts projects, supporting artists and early years practitioners, in facilitating the creative development and learning of foundation stage children and has given presentations on the importance of child-led learning and the importance of creative approaches to early years education.

He has also been working with the 5x5x5=creativity action research project since 2005, exploring how creative arts media can support 2 to 5-year old children to lead their own learning, supported and documented by the adults that work and play with them.

Through creative ecology James will work with you, to set up opportunities for children to explore the world that surrounds them, learning by direct experience, group discussion/reflection and making, encouraging development in key areas as described by the  Early Years Foundation Stage Framework:

1. Personal, Social and Emotional Development.
2. Communication, Language and Literacy.
3. Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy.
4. Knowledge and Understanding of the World.
5. Physical Development.
6. Creative Development.

'We have seen a noticeable difference in the children who worked closely with James.  They have taken the skills that the pre-school aims to encourage to a new level, confident in their ability to explore and combine, to be creative not only in artistic media but also in thought and imagination.'
(Manager, Wiltshire Pre-School)