School change is always local and dependent on the kinds of resources that are available. In this paper we explore the notion that knowledge is an important resources for vernacular educational reform. In order to explore this contention, we use the lens of cross-curricular changes undertaken by English schools in receipt of funding from Creative Partnerships. Our research identified three dominant change patterns - themes and topics in primary and secondary schools and skills-based subjects in secondary. Our study also showed that in making these changes schools had little recourse to their own collective histories or to international examples. We argue that, while policy was a significant delimiting factor on innovation, the problem-posing and solution-generating activities undertaken by schools may well have developed differently if a wider range of intellectual resources was available to them. (Contains 1 figure.)