The creative arts hold a special place in society. They offer something beyond the everyday to humanity. They rightly demand, and deserve, a special respect and careful treatment when we discuss AI in education.
Within schools, creative arts departments offer to students’ exposure to disciplines which prioritise personal expressions of emotion and diversity. They deeply value originality and prize the subjective experience of what it means to be human. The creative arts hold a special place in education. They are disciplines of expression, emotion, and deeply human experience – where the tactile, the spontaneous, and the intuitive come together to form something new. Artists, musicians, performers, and creators work through the raw material of the world, shaping it with their hands, voices, and bodies in ways that cannot be replaced by algorithms or automation. The process of creating is more than just an outcome – it is an immersive, deeply personal journey of meaning-making.
Last week, I had a fascinating conversation with an educator who leads a creative arts faculty. They were grappling with a challenge. They had taken to heart a challenge from a colleague to be “more excited” enough about AI’s role within their faculty. Sadly, they had been given the (valuable) AI Assessment Scale (AIAS) – in its wonderfully accessible, bubblegum version, developed initially by Leon Furze – and had walked away feeling deflated. It was a reaction I completely empathise with… and one that I suspect Furze, a lover of literature and an author, would be deeply disappointed in.
The arts thrive on embodiment, sensory experience, and intuition – dimensions that AI cannot (yet?) replicate. But as my conversation with this educator unfolded, a shift began to take place. They had engaged deeply with AI, reflecting on its implications for creativity and on how new art has always resulted from the influence of previous artists in a process of synthesis. Their personal reflections were exploring how AI was challenging fundamental ideas about the nature of artistic originality. The word “excited” did not best capture their, or their faculty’s, response. While there was curiousity about the place of AI in the way students learnt within their faculty and an acceptance of the arrival of this technology, there was also a hint of justifiable sadness and trepidation. There was no sense of hostility or defensiveness. There was a desire to understand and to appropriately embrace. To maintain that which is valued while enhancing it with the new.
In our discussion, we moved away from seeing the AIAS as a strict measure of assessment design and instead applied it to pedagogy itself. (I confess would love to understand the process of teaching the arts much better!) I suggested that the AIAS model has itself been revisited and revised. That it was never intended as a rigid framework for educators. I suggested that offers creative arts educators a reflective tool for considering when and how AI might enhance, rather than diminish, the teaching of a deeply important, human, creative process. Teaching is rarely a linear process – there must be flexibility. Perhaps when applying the AIAS as a tool for reflecting on pedagogy, we should see, not hard delineated borders between levels of a table but rather, porous and blurred descriptions of modalities, and opportunities for teachers to make decisions around how and when best to integrate AI. These decisions should depend on a focus on learning, the learner and, therefore, the pedagogical moment.
There are moments within the creative process where AI may offer valuable assistance. Ideation, for example, might be enriched by AI-generated prompts, alternative compositions, or unexpected juxtapositions that provoke fresh thinking. AI might provide insights into historical artistic techniques, suggest novel approaches to the uses of media, or assist in identifying means of communicating or visualising complex ideas.
At the same time, AI may play an important role in supporting accessibility. It might help students articulate their artistic intentions in ways that might otherwise be a barrier to expression. The drafting of artist statements, reflective writing, or documentation of process might be supported by AI acting as a co-writer, an editor, a ghostwriter, a mentor, or a thinking partner – ensuring that the richness of artistic intent is not lost ‘in translation’ (perhaps during an assessment task) due to literacy barriers. In such circumstances, perhaps AI does not interfere with the creative process; it simply facilitates the translation of that creativity into words that others can engage with. Perhaps it reduces the cognitive load of secondary priorities in ways that allows the student time to amplify their attention to creativity?
I don’t hold all answers here. There is no panacea but it’s clear that AI can play a part in supporting the learning of students in the creative arts. AI, however, must never become a shortcut that diminishes the experiential value of making, performing, and reflecting. The creative process is one of experimentation, risk-taking, innovation, and discovery. And it is, a process. A human process. A process of growth, of experience, of story-telling … of ‘doing more’, of ‘being more’. There are elements of art – such as the feel of clay between the fingers, the resonance of a note sung in perfect harmony, the improvisational spark in a live performance, the emotion of connection and self-discovery – that is not a space that should be mediated by AI. The AIAS encourages us to be intentional about when AI is appropriate and when it is not. When applied beyond assessment as a tool for reflection, it has potential as a means by which we consider how we might support creativity with AI in schools rather than replace the joys, sorrows, rewards and challenges inherent in the deeply human act of making art.
By the end of our conversation, I felt that the educator I spoke with had found a renewed confidence in their experience and perspective. They saw how AI could be integrated into their teaching, not as a disruptive force, but as a means of amplifying creativity where appropriate. Interestingly, full AI use was difficult for them to imagine, yet there was an overwhelming embrace of AI as a tool for exploration. Use of AI wasn’t about replacing creativity but about shifting cognitive load away from superficial and performative assessment demands and back into the heart of artistry: deep thinking, experimentation, and making.
The conversation about AI in the arts must be one of balance. AI can be an extraordinary tool for expanding creative possibilities, but only when wielded with care and respect for the integrity of the artistic process. The role of educators is to guide students in using AI thoughtfully, ensuring that it serves as an amplifier of creativity rather than a limitation upon it.
Creativity is, at its core, about the human experience – about perspective, emotion, and meaning. deeply human experience – spaces where the tactile, the spontaneous, the personal, and the intuitive come together to form something new.
Disrupted History 