Higher Education Academy

Faculty Member, Dance, Drama and Music

Other Affiliations: Ciel Associates, Lead Consultant

Discipline Lead - The Higher Education Academy

Thesis Title: Thinking, Making, Doing, Solving, Dreaming: conceptions of creativity in higher education

About

Dr. Paul Kleiman  BA Hons  M.Ed  PhD

My primary research interests are creativity and complexity in higher education (the subject of my doctoral thesis), curriculum design, and assessment, and I am a regular keynote speaker and presenter at conferences and seminars on those subjects. Recent keynotes include A Space for Assessment conference (London), the Annual Conference of the All Ireland Society for Higher Education (Dublin); Creativity and Work conference (London); NAIRTL conference (Galway).

I undertake consultancy work on assessment, creativity, and curriculum design both here in the UK and internationally (recently in Hong Kong, Ireland and the USA).

My background is in the performing and visual arts. I trained as a theatre designer and then worked - as a designer, director, performer, musician and writer - with a number of the leading companies in the field of Theatre-in-Education, political and community touring theatre. I combined this theatre work with work as an artist-in-residence in schools and communities, and also with occasional part-time lecturing in further and higher education. Eventually I took the plunge and became a full-time lecturer and course leader in drama and design.

In 1995 I joined the core team that created the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) and its unique interdisciplinary performing arts degree programme. I then became LIPA's first Head of Performance Design and Head of Assessment.

I joined PALATINE, the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Dance, Drama and Music in 2000. At that time it was part of the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN). PALATINE's main role was to work with individual lecturers, departments and institutions to support and enhance the learning and teaching of our disciplines. My main responsibilities included strategic and operational planning, and the leadership and direction of the events programme. 

I represented PALATINE and the HE performing arts sector on various strategic and policy groups at national and sector level. That work included:- leading projects on student engagement and  on External Examining involving the QAA, UUK and senior academics from HE dance, drama and music; member of the Reference Group of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the 14-19 Diploma Development Partnership.

Due to funding cuts, PALATINE closed in July 2011, and I was appointed to be the Discipline Lead for Dance, Drama and Music at The Higher Education Academy.

I am also a Lead Consultant with Ciel Associates, specializing in promoting and facilitating creativity and organisational/cultural change in organisations.

I am an external examiner for several undergraduate and post-graduate courses, and  regularly sit on course validation panels.

When not doing any of the above I spend as much time as possible on the narrowboat my partner and I bought and restored.

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