23/10/2009 by James.

At the moment I’m working on a range of different creative learning initiatives and as always, and pondering the links between them all.

Firstly I’m consulting with children and young people in creative ways for English Heritage, using site visits, writing, and making to develop interpretation and learning materials for visitors to Stonehenge.

Through my ongoing work with Salisbury Museum, we are running a session at a MLA event next, a seminar exploring child-centred learning and working with extended schools.

Additionally I’m waiting to hear whether I’ll be working with a Primary school with an outdoors focus for 5×5x5=-creativity next year, or a special school.

And to top this all off I am sharing my own learning through individual pieces of evaluation for art in education projects and professional development for early years practitioners, on the value of creative and child-led approaches to learning.

Now individually, all of this work is inspiring and challenging, but looked at together its the cross-sector links and the bigger picture that I find fascinating.

As extended schools services seek to connect schools with families and communities, and Museums look to work in more responsive ways with those families, and early years settings seek to build on the new EYFS and embed creative learning practices within them, I feel a lot more positive for the future.

To use an already over-used phrase, this kind of joined-up thinking - of valuing the individual child (and parent) whilst holding an awareness of the bigger picture of family and community - can only benefit our children as they learn and develop their own world-views. Children that learn in ways appropriate to their own needs and interests, within the context of their local environment (natural/cultural/social) develop in confidence, self-esteem, empathy, respect for difference, and with a greater awareness of their role within, and impact on that environment.

If we are to develop sustainable ways of being within our ecosystems and societies for the future, then for me the way that we learn is key.

We need to invest in and promote ways of learning that are creative (and recognise each of us as innately so) and which support each child to explore, reflect on, and re-interpret their natural and cultural heritage.

‘The potential for every child is stunted if the endpoint of learning is formulated in advance’                                                                                                                       Carlina Rinaldi

Children live through their sense. Sensory experiences link the child’s exterior world with their interior, hidden affective world… Individual children test themselves by interacting with their environment, activating their potential and reconstructing human culture.’                                                                                                                              Robin Moore

Images from Connect & Create Project with Salisbury Museum

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07/08/2009 by James.

I am continuing to read Conversation Pieces by Grant Kester at the moment (Uni of California Press), excited by the language and the confidence that the writing gives me to further develop and share my ideas on socially engaged practice.

I have been exploring recently (see the last post) how I can better articulate the relationship between art and learning and continue my research in the role of the arts within education.

Kester brings together examples of projects and theories that begin to provide a structure for holding and presenting such dialogical work and the research surrounding it.

Although the work that I am part of through 5×5x5=creativity is generally framed as a creative learning/educational project in which artists play the role of facilitators, I see no reason why it shouldn’t also be framed and shared as a series of socially engaged, dialogical artworks which take place within an educational context.

My art has never been about having the right answer, or claiming to know a truth that needs to be represented and shared, it has always sought to set up some kind of exchange and dialogue.

What Conversation Pieces does is to allow me to continue to construct a ‘home’ for my practice, a base from which to go back ‘out there’ and keep practicing as an artist who is fascinated by the potential for positive environmental and social change that comes from embedding dialogical arts practice within educational and community contexts.

‘In dialogical practice the artist, whose perceptions are informed by his or her own training, past projects and lived experience, comes into a given site or community characterized by its own unique constellation of social and economic forces, personalities and traditions. In the exchange that follows, both the artist and his/her collaborators will have their existing perceptions challenged…What emerges is a new set of insights, generated at the intersection of both perspectives and catalyzed through the collaborative production of a given project.’

Grant Kester

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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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11/05/2009 by James.

A brief mention of a conference set up in partnership with 5×5x5=creativity. Follow the link at the bottom for more info.

Creativity and Culture The future of learning

Including Presentations by:

For more information download an application pack:

http://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/education/education-conferences

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24/11/2008 by James.

The online exhibition based on this year’s research, is now available to view on the 5×5x5=creativity website.

Please follow the link below, to view snapshots of the work carried out by myself with Pitton Pre-School and Salisbury Arts Centre, and some of the other settings involved in the 5×5x5=creativity creative learning research project, 2008.

Information and images from more of the settings involved will be following in the next couple of weeks…

http://www.5×5x5creativity.org.uk/?id=131

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14/05/2008 by James.

Yesterday was the last session of the year at Pitton, and we asked the children what they wanted to do, what materials they wanted to use, and showed them photos from across this year to support them in remembering the range of places and materials that they had explored so far.

They chose to revisit the junk materials, and the outside spaces and features around the pre-school, creating moving structures from bamboo, foam, and a strong wind, working together in teams to develop new relationships, and using role-play to test out new or recurring ideas.

A case study exploring the learning that has taken place for individual children at Pitton Pre-School, as a result of their involvement in this year’s research, will be published over the next couple of months on the 5×5x5=creativity website .

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09/05/2008 by James.

Creative Thinkers=Powerful Minds is a conference for strategy leaders, head teachers, artists, teachers and anyone interested in exploring this belief in children’s and young people’s creative capacities and participation. The conference and workshops will enable you to reflect upon and commit to shaping the future direction of education towards developing creative thinking and powerful minds.

Keynote speakers will address topics including personalisation, participation, mass creativity and transformation. Speakers include: leading authority on innovation and creativity Charles Leadbeater, author of We-Think; artist Richard Wentworth, Master of Drawing, Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford; Professor and Professor Anna Craft, Chair of Education, Exeter University, Reader, Open University and Visiting Scholar, Harvard University.

‘For centuries, children have expected adults to believe in them – in their talents, their sensitivity, their creative intelligence and their desire to understand their surroundings. We have to understand them through the things they want to do and show they can do. Children use a 100 languages to teach us and show us. They have an inexhaustible desire to learn.’ Loris Malaguzzi, Founder and Director of Reggio Emilia,1992

More information at www.5×5x5creativity.org.uk

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09/05/2008 by James.

Encouraging the children to recall what they did last week in their own words gave us further insight into the learning behind their play and where they were taking it. We gave them chance to watch the video of the last session, and tell us what they were doing in their own words, before encouraging them to start to plan todays session, listing the materials they would need and where they needed to play to carry their ideas out.

They chose to revisit the construction materials, and we provided some extra recycled materials from the scrap store, working on the field again, where a stronger narrative and role-play element came through, as bowls were filled for imaginary dogs and the sensory experience of moulding cut grass let to the creation of a production line to mix food for them.

The group negotiated roles amongst their team of ‘workers’ and ideas flowed, triggered by the new materials added and the features of the field around them.

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01/05/2008 by James.

Today we gave the children a chance to explore the tubes again, combined with sheets of hardboard, wooden blocks, piping, canes and willow. We wanted to give them a chance to bring together their fascination with connecting and exploring inner/outer spaces with the ‘real-world’ of the walk last week, and the more immediate landscape of the field behind the pre-school.
Key areas of interest from the walk around the village (paths, drives up or down hills to houses, walls constructed of stone or brick, drains and gullies) reappeared and were revisited through the creation of structures and the marking-out of spaces across the ground and up a grassy bank, whilst imaginary play turned some of these into houses, spaceships and beds.

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22/04/2008 by James.

Today we walked around the village, stopping to explore walls, snails, drains and ditches, mud, and a horse - encouraging the children to use all their senses and giving them chance to translate the learning from and interest in tubes/pipes and inside/outside spaces into the context of the real world.

Coversations grew up around the snails sheltering in a drain pipe and the path of a drainage channel that ran alongside the road, and individual children used their bodies to follow routes mapped out by landscape features such as kerbs, gravel patches and dry ditches, noting the sounds and textures that they found along the way, and recording their finds with cameras.

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