A Blaze of Colour: Workshop for Educators

Professor O’Connor is an internationally recognised expert who has created theatre and researched the possibilities of the arts in schools, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, in disaster zones and with the homeless.

O’Connor is the Director of the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the University of Auckland. He led the creation of Te Rito Toi, an online resource to support the return to school by children during COVID-19. The site has gained international recognition and has been used in 114 countries.

International evidence is clear that Arts rich schools do better at literacy and numeracy outcomes and significantly better in terms of wellbeing indicators. The arts at the heart of schools, as both a curriculum area and as pedagogy, enriches both teaching and learning. O’Connor leads this free workshop for educators, looking at how we might more meaningfully engage with the joy and possibility inherent in the arts by embedding them across all aspects of what we do in schools, to make them more creative and human places.