I am sad to hear 25+ years on, they still fail to encourage creativity in schools!

Yeah, not sure about the situation in primary school but high schools fortunately have a wide variety of courses on creative subjects! In my former local high school there's now a 'performing arts' emphasis line which is even better! Nice to see variety in it even though it's not a "special" high school so to speak. Also, a 'math-natural sciences' emphasis line was introduced, that's cool too.

And good for you about sticking to your guns (or kantele rather)

Haha😄

Thank you for reading and commenting again @sukhasanasister!