A Space for Policy Legacy: An Ethnographic Exploration of a Secondary School’s Commitment to Creativity after National Policy Priorities Have Changed

To-date qualitative research in the field of policy enactment has tended to focus on investigating existing national policy discourse and the ways in which this discourse is creatively reconstituted in school-based contexts of practice. In this paper, the focus is on uncovering the ways in which a school-based commitment to a specific policy – in this case creativity – is sustained and has alegacy even after national policy discourse and priorities have changed. By focusing ethnographically upon the legacy of policy at a school-based level, the paper sets out to illuminate the social actions teachers undertake to establish, nurture and protect their institutional and professional investment in and commitment towards creativity