26/07/2010 by James.

Not quite enough room to link them into 360 degrees here but you get the idea; a gorgeous spot on National Trust land, with heather moorland, rocky crags, views out across the ocean and plenty of wind to blow away any thoughts or worries clogging the brain.

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26/07/2010 by James.

An evening wandering around the rockpools…

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15/07/2010 by James.

I went on my first visit to the College Lake Nature Reserve last week. Its a Berks, Bucks and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) reserve, near Tring in Buckinghamshire.

Its a beautiful and surprisingly large site, and I’ve driven past the half-hidden entrance many times on my way to visit family in Hertfordshire. There’s a large lake with small areas of woodland and chalk grassland, and a wealth of bird and animal life including breeding polecats, sand-martins, barn owls etc.

I’ve been commissioned by Outdoor Culture to create an installation in one of the bird hides, together with artists Martin Prothero and Linda Cornwell, responding to the site and its wildlife.

I’ll also be working with Ashmead Combined School in Aylesbury, to support reception age children to explore the reserve and their own grounds in creative ways.

The bulk of the work will be taking place from September, but I don’t want to wait to go back until then, so will be making a return visit soon to spend some time watching and recording the insect and bird-life, and finding out more about the site’s history as a chalk quarry.

The ideas are certainly bubbling up already, its a great opportunity to explore how man-made landscape features can be developed for wildlife, and how the arts can be used to support people’s developing environmental awareness. I’ll be back soon with more information, images and artwork as things develop…

In the meantime, for more information on Outdoor Culture just follow this link…

www.outdoorculture.com

And to read more about the Trust and College Lake see

www.bbowt.org.uk/content.asp?did=23523

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30/06/2010 by James.

I think its a queen buff tailed bumble bee, but I could be wrong… http://www.plantpress.com/wildlife/o441-bufftailedbumblebee.php

(Have to remember to take my camera not just my phone to the studio next time)

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30/06/2010 by James.

Next week there’s an exhibition at The Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, set up by the three settings involved in 5×5x5=creativity, in our new research cluster in Kingston Upon Thames.

The exhibition will include photographic and written documentation, together with artworks, to share the learning journeys of the children involved in the research, and of the artists, teachers and cultural organisations working alongside them.

Please follow the link below for more information, and see the Stanley Picker Gallery website for directions.

5×5×5_spg_exhibposter.pdf

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28/06/2010 by James.

A drawing from this morning in my studio of a hornet found at the roadside. Coincidentally I also spotted one in the woods this evening whilst walking my dog, a low throbbing hum called my attention to her, slowly hovering around an opening in a tree trunk.

More info on these beautifully impressive insects on the Natural History Museum website

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25/06/2010 by James.

I went for a lovely long walk out on Salisbury Plain today. Not many animals or birds about as it was midday and they were being a bit more sensible than me, but the flowers, clouds and bird / cricket song more than made up for it.

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25/06/2010 by James.

Another busy and rewarding week, and the last two days of my work with Churchfields Infant School in Redbridge, through Creative Partnerships.

We had our celebration day yesterday, with parents and governors coming in to hear more about the project, see documentation and artwork, and to get hands-on, trying out some of the activities developed with the children during the life of the project. This included a group of parents constructing a shelter, designed through mark-making and modeling by their reception age children, which will continue to evolve as the children themselves add onto it.

It was brilliant to hear how individual children had been continuing their investigations at home, exploring their own gardens, reflecting on the buildings and structures around them to discuss what makes a shelter a shelter, noticing the shapes and patterns on every day things such as leaves and feathers found on the floor, and bringing parents to the documentation panels and structures placed around the school to share their learning.

Its been a really interesting journey for me. We started out with an aim of supporting the children’s voices to be heard, and of using the local outdoor environment in creative ways, with the possibility of generating ideas for enriching the school’s own grounds.

My last session with the Year 2 class ended with us looking back through hand made journals of drawings, photos, rubbings and gathered found objects, reflecting on what we had learned over the last few months, and where we had been.

We then asked these children to think about what might come next, how could their explorations and their learning continue beyond the life of the project?

Their responses were rich, detailed and inspiring, with maps and plans showing networks of enclosed den-like spaces reaching out across the school grounds, connecting the play areas of the different year groups and providing new spaces for talking, playing, reading, and for wildlife.

 It reminded me of the work I’ve also been doing with/for English Heritage, giving local children and young people an opportunity to develop designs for the interior of the education space, and for ways of sharing the importance of the environmentally sustainable features planned for the visitor centre, through engaging and accessible interpretation.

Of course the future of the centre looks in doubt now as one of the many spending cuts, but the opportunity to be listened to, to have your ideas and vision for the future documented, taken seriously and (hopefully) acted upon, is such an important experience. Whatever happens with the centre, and in the school grounds at Churchfields, I hope that we have given the children greater confidence in their creative ability to shape the human world to suit their needs, increased empathy and understanding of difference, and a greater awareness of how people can live in an interconnected harmony with their local natural and cultural heritage.

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09/06/2010 by James.

Here’s a few images taken from a recent drop-in family workshop, that I ran at Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum for Salisbury International Arts Festival, responding to chalk hill figures with liquid clay, chalk and charcoal.

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26/05/2010 by James.

Its that time of year again when the sun starts shining, the world turns green and projects swell up to fill all my time. Not that I’m moaning, after a quiet year last year its great to be busy again and brilliant to be meeting and learning from a real range of people and places.

Since I last wrote I’ve been continuing to travel up to NE London and work in partnership with Churchfields Infant School. The Year Two children’s journey through the sessions at school and in Epping Forest led them to want to make a nest inspired woven sculpture in the grounds which continues to evolve according to their developing ideas.The school have also placed new noticeboards within the playground containing documentation from the duration of the project (as well as on the school’s website), so that parents and other visitors can keep track of its progress.

The Reception children at the school were inspired by seeing this structure and worked with myself and a teacher to create/define their own space outside using canes, lengths of fabric, string and tape. It was wonderful to see them so engaged for so long. The conversations and the role play around the growing structure was so rich, with writing and mark-making onto flags and signs decorating the outer walls, stars taped to the floor and a telescope built into the walls, amongst lots of other things.

I’ve also been continuing to visit the 5 settings of the Kingston Upon Thames 5×5x5=creativity cluster, with the artists working in partnership with Nursery and Reception classes in schools and children centres.

Its been fascinating to get a glimpse of how groups of children, and the artists and educators working alongside them, have grown in confidence in expressing their ideas, exploring inner and outer spaces through a range of resources chosen to suit their needs and interests. An emphasis has been placed by the majority of settings, on researching how creative ways can be used to support children to access the outdoors and to build relationships, and on the days I’ve visited there have been clear links between settings in the way that children have used string and tape to create webs or traps - winding, wrapping and tying the features of the landscape and each other together.

Its something that keeps coming up for me recently, this connecting of people and places, both physically through children and young people’s play and investigations of the world around them, and socially as bonds are created and new relationships negotiated.

Recently I worked for The Salisbury Festival, the BTCV and Wiltshire Young Carers at Harnham Water Meadows near Salisbury. Here, on the Unearthing Stories project, a storyteller Jamie Crawford worked with the young people to tell and develop stories linked with the landscape and their own life experiences, they had a chance to carry out practical conservation work, and I introduced them to ways of working with willow, creating sculptures whose form and structure was drawn from the wildlife and features of the meadows - the pollarded willows, the nesting swans and the insects that fly and live along the rivers and ditches.

This last week I also worked at an Earlyarts Professional Development Day hosted by 5×5x5=creativity in Bath. The day was centred around the use of Intelligent Materials - open-ended recycled or natural materials that offer no prescribed use for the children (or adults) that play and make with them, so supporting the children to follow their own ideas. This time I shared my own approach to using found, natural materials, and offered the artists, educators, researchers and play-workers a chance to explore branches, leaves, bark and fir-cones together with raffia, wool and string.

And somewhere in between all this I have been making time for myself to enjoy the green lushness that Spring brings to my part of the world - watching foxes from up on the downs, tracking down a long barrow amongst the sweet honey scented bluebells of West Woods, and keeping an eye out for the pair of Red Kites that seem to have taken up residence somewhere near by.

From now on, although busy, things calm down a little and I can think again about how all this can inform my more individual work. I have been working on adapting an old jacket of mine with finds and marks, and have various other bits and pieces on the go, gathering, exploring and finding ways of connecting all those treasured finds and experiences together.

( A quick reminder, if you’re interested in creativity and learning, the Making Waves conference at Bath Spa Uni on 18th June should be an inspiring day. For more info download a programme from the 5×5x5=creativity website events page)

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