UWE, Me, and a ‘thought for the day’

04/08/2009 by James.

I ran my first session on the postgrad participatory arts & media course yesterday at UWE in Bristol. I was facilitating a group session around artists working in pre-school and primary education, called The Art of Learning.

I am fascinated at the parallels between creative teaching/learning practice and my own practice as an artist exploring the perceptual relationship between individuals and their immediate environment. I am excited at the idea of the artist’s creative process and the pupils creative learning journey echoing and informing each other.

Is art the documentation of an artist’s creative learning journey? Are children’s experiences of education as inspiring and adventurous as my own journey as I explore the world around me through my own creative practice? And if not, why not, when the reasearch shows the immense value of ways of learning that are centred around children’s needs, interests and innate creativity.

Through the various areas of my practice as an artist - individual, participatory, consultative - I am growing more and more to realise that the process that artists follow shouldn’t be a luxury, a thing confined to the artworld, it should be embedded within our society and our education system, supporting everyone to fulfill their creative potential in whatever area is appropriate to them.

Maybe that way we could evolve into a society that respects and values difference, and make use of what we have been given rather than striving to be something else, denying our true nature and blinding ourselves to the systems of which we are part.

 ’Ordinarily we aim for a literal picture of the world, but in fact we create a world according to our mode of participation, and we create ourselves accordingly. If we think in our present way, we will create the kind of world that we have created. If we think in another way, we might create a different world, and different people as well. Only the two together can change.’ 

David Bohm, ‘On Creativity’

(new work in progress)

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