Primary Assemblies for Creativity and Enterprise

Benefits

Primary Assemblies for Creativity and Enterprise contains 40 assemblies based around 12 key themes that will:

• Support the Creativity and Enterprise work that you already do within your school - each assembly tackles one of the key themes and promotes the skills of flexibility, collaboration, independence, teamwork and problem solving.
• Save you time – as most assemblies will only take a few minutes to prepare.
• Provide inclusive assemblies for all - all assemblies are of the highest quality, and will contribute to students’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
• Help colleagues to share the responsibility of giving assemblies - we provide supportive and accessible resources for you and your colleagues.
• Provide themes for the whole-school - themes include assemblies for younger and older children, or the whole-school.

Summary of contents

The 40 assemblies are designed to be delivered to a large, mixed ability audience and each one includes:
• An introduction – this gives the main background and sets the scene for the assembly
• A story – this illustrates the message of the assembly in an engaging way
• A conclusion – this considers the lessons that can be drawn from the story
• A meditation/prayer – this is not affiliated to any particular religion, so is appropriate for any school setting.

The assemblies have been developed around the following 12 themes:

Problem solving
Enterprise means knowing when to seize the moment. But it also means knowing when to stop, stand back and reflect on what you already know that can help with the task that faces you. 
• Example Assembly: Careful observation and creative use of evidence
Sherlock Holmes deduces a huge amount about a man by examining his hat.

Working in teams
Teamwork is an essential part of enterprise and creative endeavour, because a creative team adds up to more than the sum of the individual abilities of its members.
• Example Assembly: Choose your team carefully
Shackleton puts together his South Pole team in the knowledge that they will have to spend months together in isolation.

Going for it
An essential attribute of the enterprising and creative individual is that he or she knows when it’s time to stop weighing up the options and make a decisive move. 
• Example Assembly: Sometimes there’s nowhere to go but forward
On December 3, 1967, South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard very literally took a man’s life in his hands and carried out the world’s first heart transplant.

Imagining the future
People who are 'ahead of their time' have the ability to look beyond today’s problems and concerns and preferences, to a time when there will be new ideas, new problems, new ways of living. Then they think up ways of dealing with the future.
• Example Assembly: Imagining the impossible?
In 2030, Jenny is a jetpack user. She discusses the pros and cons of a jetpack world.

Asking the right questions and making connections
The enterprising person, faced with something that looks both interesting and difficult to explain, needs to find out what’s going on. That means thinking of the right questions to ask – whether inwardly or of other people. 
• Example Assembly: Knowing what to ask the patient
A doctor asks a range of questions before deciding on your treatment.

What if?
Good entrepreneurs and artists have all at some time reached the point where they had to stop what they were doing and start again in a different way.
• Example Assembly: Time to try something else
Katie’s Mother’s Day Meal. Katie abandons the difficult Mother’s Day meal that’s half finished and starts on something simpler.

I’m in charge!
Leadership is important at every level. Children develop leadership through all of their activities in school, in class and outside. It’s important that they recognise this and begin to think about what kind of leadership attributes they prefer and which are in tune with their individual approach to life.
• Example Assembly: Four kinds of leader
The lion, the squirrel, the big friendly dog and the otter.

Eating soup with a knife
One of the hard lessons for people doing any kind of creative work, or engaged in any enterprise, is that many problems don’t have easy answers – and some don’t have any satisfactory answers at all. What’s left is to continue doing the best you can with what you have.
• Example Assembly: A woman’s touch might do it
What does a UN peacekeeper do? And what part do women play?

Changing lives
Sometimes the work or the ideas or the creative insights of a person or a team succeed in changing and improving life-chances of another individual or a group.
• Example Assembly: A start in life
The Prince’s Trust works to help young people change their lives by offering guidance, business training, practical skills and start-up grants for projects.

Knowing how to listen
Effective listening is perhaps the key to all enterprise and creativity. It’s necessary to be able to listen to the nuances of what’s being said, to absorb the messages, to seek further information if necessary and not be too quick to push your own point of view.
• Example Assembly: Hearing the differences
Benjamin Zephaniah talks about the rhythms and sounds of Dub Poetry and the accents of the Caribbean – and Birmingham!

Science underpins enterprise
So often the driving force for any creative or entrepreneurial endeavour is found in science, which works together with an applied discipline such as engineering, or medicine, to make difficult problems become manageable.
• Example Assembly: New needs can revive old ideas
Electric cars: will the newest designs help save the environment?

Creative people
Creativity and enterprise are human attributes. Like so many other attributes, they are partly inborn and partly learned and nurtured. What’s beyond doubt is that every single adult and child can be inspired to greater things by learning about people who have made their creative mark on society.
• Example Assembly: Pulling yourself up
Levi Roots is a singer, chef and entrepreneur with a message for the entrepreneurs of tomorrow…

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