Creativity and outdoor education: which connection and relationship?

In the last few years, there is renewed attention on the outdoor educational experiences that seem to meet the many needs of today’s children. These experiences are often linked to a renewal of theories and practices underlying teachers and educators’ style (e.g. Waite, 2011, 2017; Children and Nature Network). Amongst the potential that the education in nature offers, creativity also seems to find room through the different ways in which it could be possible to stay into the natural environment and the open and unpredictable experiences it offers. The numerous researches on outdoor education (e.g. Louv, 2012; Tovey, 2007; Waite, 2011, 2017; Antonietti et al., 2018; Bertolino et al., 2017) are most interested in early childhood; they have pointed a potential creativity into the use of natural materials as unstructured tools, or loose parts (e.g. Guerra, 2017) and into different models of play, even if the correlation between creativity and outdoor experiences is still not sufficiently analyzed in-depth in the ways and the forms in which it could be developed. Based on the assumption that creativity is dynamic, complex and it changes depending on different factors and within interactions (Beghetto, Corazza, 2019), what would it happen by modifying the education context among indoor and outdoor? In which way the outdoor environment could support the creative processes in primary school children age (6-11)? What about the teacher’s role? How and what is it possible to observe?