Dr. Penny Hay is an artist, educator and researcher, Professor of Imagination and Reader in Creative Teaching and Learning at Bath Spa University UK, and Founding Director House of Imagination. Signature projects include School Without Walls, Forest of Imagination and Playful Green Planet. Penny’s doctoral research focused on children’s learning identity as artists, and her PhD monograph ‘Children are Artists’ was published in 2023.
Penny is a National Teaching Fellow and Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, with an Honorary Fellowship from Arts University Plymouth, a Fellowship in Imagination at the Centre for Future Thinking and awards from the Landscape Institute, Thornton Education Trust, Action for Children’s Arts, Creative Bath, Landscape Institute and Outstanding Contribution to International Possibility Studies.
Penny is the strand leader for Pedagogy in the Centre for Policy Pedagogy and Practice at Bath Spa University, and co-chair of the eARTh Research Group, a member of HundrED Advisory Group, Cultural Learning Alliance Advisory Group, RSA Playful Green Planet team, The Saturday Club Pedagogy Advisory Group, Sensory Atelier, Attenborough Arts and the Crafts Council Learning Advisory Groups.
Penny was an artist-researcher on the recent AHRC Global Challenges Research project ‘Rethinking waste: Compound 13 Lab’ in Mumbai and co-investigator on an Erasmus+ project Interstice in Europe researching the space between art, children and educators.
Previously Penny was a primary teacher and lecturer in arts education at Goldsmiths College, the Institute of Education, University of London, at Roehampton Institute and the University of the West of England. Penny has worked extensively in arts education across the UK, co-ordinated the professional development programme and co-designed the Artist teacher Scheme with Arts Council England on behalf of the National Society for Education in Art and Design. She integrates her experience in arts and education with participative action research engaging individuals, institutions and communities.
