25/02/2010 by James.

I was working with Churchfields Infant School in Redbridge, NE London, on Monday and Tuesday this week, as the first of 5 two-day blocks of sessions there on a Creative Partnerships project.

The focus on the project is to allow the children’s voices to be heard through a creative and child-led way of working, and to make the most that the local outdoor environment has to offer.

I am working with Reception and Year 2 children and their teaching staff on this project, and this week made books with the year 2 children, to record their experiences of the project using  drawing/painting/rubbings and found objects.

With the staff I led an Inset session exploring creativity and child-led learning, and a hands-on session similar to the reception children’s; using clay as a base for marks, shapes, patterns and constructions, from materials found around the school grounds.

Next month we’re going to be walking up into Epping Forest to explore, play and create. We’ve asked the children what they think we should do in the Forest, and the teaching staff are going to keep me updated with what happens between now and then, so that the ‘brief’ that we give the children can be as responsive as possible to their continuing individual learning journeys.

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12/02/2010 by James.

Here are a few photos from a project that I ran this week at Warneford Secondary School in Highworth.

I talked to the whole year 9 group in an assembly about the role of art in exploring identity, and in defining and sharing a sense of your own identity with others. Then I worked with 15 of the young people to develop ideas for artworks which gathered together images, shapes and ideas from their own lives, like a kind of creative identity puzzle.

Their teachers and I wanted to give them a chance to come up with their own ideas around who they are and what they are passionate about - to experience how art can support you to be in control of your image and identity, be more reflective on who you are as a person and then start to think about what you might like to achieve in the future.

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10/02/2010 by James.

Please share the following information with any 14 to 19 yr olds you know of in the Stonehenge/Salisbury/surrounding areas, who may be interested in this exciting opportunity to advise English Heritage on the development of the new Visitor Centre and learning/outreach programmes.

Thank you!

STONEHENGE YOUNG PEOPLE’S PANEL

WHAT?

English Heritage at Stonehenge needs the options of young people to decide how to make their new Visitor Centre an interesting and fun place to visit in the future.

WHO?

Young people from 14-19 years old, who are interested in design, archaeology, or the environment, in sharing their opinions and having something different on their CV.

HOW?

We want to hold on Open Meeting, and four Young People’s Panel sessions, based at Salisbury Museum, with visits to Stonehenge and other local venues.

Open Meeting:

The open meeting will give you a chance to see artists’ impressions of the new Visitor Centre, handle artefacts, explore the Museum and give ideas on what needs to happen next. If you decide to become part of the panel you can sign up for that here too.

Panel Sessions:

At each session there will be a different theme and content – such as meeting the architects, designing interactive exhibits, and exploring how we can make facilities more environmentally sustainable.

The Young People’s Panel is free. Local transport costs will be paid and refreshments will be provided for all of the four panel sessions.

WHEN?

Open Meeting:

Saturday 13^th February at Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum, Cathedral Close, Salisbury, 10.30am to 12.30pm (just turn up, no need to book).

Panel Sessions:

Saturday 27^th February, 20^th March, 17^th April, 8^th May at Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum, 10.15am to 12.45pm (sign up for your place at the Open Meeting).

It is hoped that the panel sessions will continue after this initial project.

For more information please contact James Aldridge:

Email: info@creative-ecology.co.uk Telephone: 07931 407 186

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26/01/2010 by James.

I was up in Lancaster last week, running my last 3 days of the creative outdoor learning project with the Nursery children (2 to 3 yr olds).The aim of the sessions was to give the pre-school staff a taste of creative ways that children can be supported to explore their local outdoor environment.

In the longer term, this kind of creative approach can enable staff and artist to work together, to begin to identify and follow individual childrens’ learning pathways, and better provide for their needs. In this case I was only working with the group for 3 days, so it was to be used of a starting point, for further creative and child-initiated work.

I concentrated on devising sessions that linked inside and out, and made the most of natural and recycled open-ended materials.

I’m keen to avoid re-inforcing the idea in schools and pre-schools of using one way of working indoors and one out, of the door being a barrier to taking drawing outside, or bringing mud and leaves in. Otherwise I think there’s a danger that  outdoor-learning or environmental art projects can lead to the perception of ‘nature’ as being something that you keep in a kind of bubble and visit occasionally, whilst your everyday life carries on as usual.

Over the three days I offered different materials and different ways of exploring places and materials to the children, with each day loosely labeled as Mark-making/Sensory Exploration, Small Scale Construction/Clay Work, and Large-Scale Construction/Role Play.

As usual the children didn’t necessarily use the resources in ways that fitted the labels or our expectations, and that was fine. The grouping and labeling of resources was a starting point, and the ability to work across different areas enables children at different stages of development, or with different interests, to experiment, make connections and learn.

The photos added here are from the last day, when different options were combined and laid out in the forest area, and mark-making and construction blurred into role play.

The first day involved getting very messy with a bucket of liquid clay, chalk, mud and graphite sticks as we explored mark-making in the forest area. The second involved collecting ‘treasures’ from the local area chosen by the children, and then exploring them with clay. So I didn’t get chance to take any photos from the first two sessions due to being pretty much covered in mud and clay.

So to sum up, great fun, very messy, and as usual very inspiring, to be exploring materials and environments alongside the senses and imaginations of young children.

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14/12/2009 by James.

An opportunity for artists to join the new 5×5x5 cluster in Kingston… 

London Paid (£40k-50k pro rata) Part time Artform: combined arts, dance, music, theatre, visual arts   Contact: Penny Hay penny@5×5x5creativity.org.uk

Description

5×5x5=creativity in Kingston: call for artists (12 days work Feb - June 2010)

5×5x5=creativity is an action research organisation dedicated to supporting children and young people in their exploration and expression of creative ideas. Starting in February 2010, we are looking for five artists to work with five educational settings in Kingston in collaboration with five cultural centres. The project aims to demonstrate ways in which creativity can be fostered in all children and fire their interest in learning, will explore ways in which boys can be involved in, motivated by and succeed in their learning environments, influence educational practice by establishing creativity as an essential foundation of learning, produce research to demonstrate the value of creative enquiry, relationships and environments in helping children develop as confident, creative thinkers, and share the research findings as widely as possible, creating a legacy for the future and to provide integrated training and mentoring for participating teachers, artists and schools, including opportunities to collaborate.

Artists will be invited to apply for the project through Arts Council England and London Schools Arts Service. Artists will be paid for the equivalent of 12 days @ £200 per day. Artists will be responsible for their own national insurance and tax. All artists will need to be police checked.

Schedule
Selected applicants will be interviewed on Thursday 28 January 2010 at King Athelstan Primary School
First meeting with settings will be on 5 February 2010 at King Athelstan Primary School
Placements will run from February – June 2010.  Artists will work in settings for the equivalent of 10 days and will be involved in professional development and reflection for the equivalent of 2 days.  All participants will have access to and the support of a mentor.

Applications
Send a CV, images of work and a statement of your interest in this project to:

Penny Hay, Director of Research
5×5x5=creativity
PO Box 3236
Chippenham  SN15 9DE
penny@5×5x5creativity.org

Closing date: 31 December 2009

For a full description please download from our website: www.5×5x5creativity.org.uk

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09/12/2009 by James.

I went in to the studio today to have a bit of a blitz… to clear out old images on the walls and generally de-clutter. I wanted to clear the space and clear my mind and to focus on what’s really important in my work.

But that’s just the point, when I start to think about it I know what’s important to me in terms of my focus and my values, but its not all that easy to work out if/how that comes across to others.

I can know that my participatory work supports people to explore themselves and their environment creatively, because I’m there with them, I get the feedback and I can get involved in the evaluation. And I know that this work feeds me, that I learn about how people can use art to learn in creative and ‘joined-up’ ways.

BUT… when I make more individual work, how do I or any other artist for that matter, know what effect it has on anyone else, unless you are actually there with them?

I had an interesting conversation with one of my 5×5x5=creativity colleagues yesterday, about the relationship of participatory and individual practice. In some ways it worries me that my work on projects such as 5×5x5 is focused on the importance of the creative process, and yet the next day I might be in my studio making a wall-based piece for exhibition, that I will leave and walk away and never really know if it is having any positive impact.

And yet, I reassured myself today that its okay, because, as I wrote in my sketchbook…

the artwork acts as an indicator of the level of personal/environmental awareness, whilst the process of exploring that leads to and informs the creation of the artwork supports the development of such an integrated awareness of self & environment.

The artefact is the evidence of the process and of its effects on the perception of the individual (me).

The creation of the artwork also further supports a sensory exploration of the world in a more focused way, and (if made in the right way) can act as a conduit for the flow of life energy, through the senses, through the individual and into the artwork.

So, as I came to realise after clearing the clutter, and (s)crawling across a rolled out sheet of paper to get my ideas ‘out-there’, how the different areas of my practice link up and relate to each other…

I am researching culturally influenced perception  (its impact on our learning, our behaviour and the ecosystems on which we depend), and its relationship to more direct, individual, sensory engagement. My resulting work supports the development of greater understanding of the relationship between the two, and the gap between them.

I am breaking down the perceptual barriers to direct engagement with ‘the one’ and ‘the now’… my research and my explorations inform my own understanding, which in turn supports my work’s ability to engage with its audience.

In other words I don’t need to make someone feel anything or think anything specific. I just need to provide the audience of my work, whether object based or participatory, access to a place where they can engage with the stuff of the world, and the issues that I am interested in, and allow them to gain from that experience in whatever way they need to at that point in time, as part of their own learning journey.

…Phew!

(by the way, the scruffy dog at the top is Moshi, who often accompanies me on my adventures, and was patient enough to wait in my studio, so I thought I’d include her too.)

Since writing this post I came across the following article on twitter (via @dryearth) which looks at the experience of the artwork by the artist/ audience, and the context within which the work is created/experienced -

Situated Cognition, Dynamic Systems, and Art: On Artistic Creativity and Aesthetic Experience - Ingar Brinck

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01/12/2009 by James.

I was in Kingston yesterday for 5×5x5=creativity, talking with a group of heads, teachers, and early years practitioners about creative learning and the inclusion of boys.

Its a tricky path to follow, providing for the needs of boys, without putting them into a box, and reinforcing any stereotypical ways of seeing and working with them. I know I didn’t enjoy my time at a traditional boys school and didn’t respond to the emphasis on outdoor sports and the controlling  almost dictatorial approach followed by some of the teachers. But there is research to suggest that a lot of boys do learn best through a more active full-bodied approach, and greater access to the outdoors.

My take on things is that if statistically more boys are seen to be ‘failing’ or not achieving what’s expected of them, then we’re doing something wrong, and that we’re probably doing something wrong for all children, not just the boys, but maybe (statistically speaking) the girls are more able to cope with a tradition of top-down, crowd-control, teaching methods.

Are we planning experiences for boys that build on their interests and value their strengths as active learners and problem solvers, or are we simply expecting them to be compliant, passive recipients of new skills and knowledge?

Confident, capable and creative: supporting boys achievements - DCSF

Now to me you could swap the ‘boys’ to ‘children’ and it would be even more pertinent - the reason children ‘fail’ is because our education system fails them.

I’m not a teacher, I am an artist and a creative learning consultant. I have loads of respect for teachers and learn from them each time I work with them. I am excited by the way in which I can work in partnership with educators and children, we can learn from each other, and by allowing the child to take the lead, they can show us how to work with them, where to work with them, and what they need to succeed.

But the difficulty is how to support teachers to put into practice this kind of creative, child-initiated approach when they are given so many hoops to jump through and class sizes that seriously inhibit opportunities for 1 to 1 contact with and observation of, individual children.

If each and every child was given the opportunity to learn in a way which is relevant to their needs and interests, through valuing and working with their own innate creativity, and if every child was encouraged to explore their local environment through their bodies and imaginations, then how can anyone fail - and why would we even need to teach or learn in specific ways according to gender?

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25/11/2009 by James.

Its been a while since I got chance to get back on here and share what I’ve been up to.

First of all I went to the Brecon Beacons for a few days of space, air, and mountain views, a beautiful area just along the M4 and up a bit, gorgeous!

It was great to be amongst the last of the Autumn colour, to be out walking and watching Red Kites, and come to a log fire. Here’s a photograph I took of the reflections on the canal near where we were staying, this reflected view for me gives the woods a much deeper, darker, mysterious, almost primeval quality, like a fairytale wood of dreams and stories.

Since then I’ve been busy with the Stonehenge Young People’s Consultation Project again for English Heritage, and have set up a blog for the participants. As soon as that is made public I’ll be sure to put the details up on here.

So far I’ve worked Years 5, 7, and 10, looking at designing the interior of the new education space,  creating a booklet for Geography students on the changing visitor experience past and future, and developing ideas for new face-to-face tours and workshops for Travel and Tourism students.

So its been a case of taking time to explore the monument and its surrounding landscape as it is now and then using discussion, drawing, writing and other creative ways to help everyone share their ideas for the future visitor centre. Here’s a couple of before and after shots of the changes planned for the area immediately around the monument.

This last week I was staying and working up in Lancaster alongside children and staff at the University’s Pre-School Centre. We were using different media to encourage the children to explore and learn from their interaction with the outdoors, whilst supporting the staff to develop their own skills in facilitating child-initiated learning.

We used mark-making materials, clay, natural objects, and a variety of recycled objects to explore shape, pattern, space, height, letter, numbers, and whatever else the children were interested in.

And finally, for today at least, I’m off to Kingston on Monday to run a professional development session with the new 5×5x5=creativity research cluster there. Its aimed at Pre and Primary School educators and will focus on Creativity and Inclusion, concentrating on supporting boys to learn creatively, especially in the outdoors.

So its busy at the moment, which is great, and its all connected and all so relevant to my practice, which is even better!

All I need now is a little time to get back in the studio and make some new artwork…

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29/10/2009 by James.

To follow on from the professional development session that I led at a Salisbury Nursery last week on Creative Learning in Early Years Education, I ran a hands on session for the staff and children yesterday.

We explored woodland materials using our senses and magnifying glasses, and discovered patterns, shapes, textures and stories by combining them with clay.

The responses from the group of 3 to 5 year olds was varied, with individual children touching, pressing and squeezing the clay, making cars, snowmen or eggs, or taking their clay away from the table to cook in an imaginary oven.

The idea of ‘intelligent materials’ is that they are open ended. They aren’t toys, they don’t encourage a particular reaction or response, they facilitate the children in exploring their own senses and ideas. It linked nicely with last week’s inset session where we discussed ways of supporting children to lead their own learning, through the use of appropriate materials, language and documentation.

I’m in the process of confirming permission to share the images of the children, so in the meantime, I’ve added these no-face pics.

For more information on creative learning in Early Years settings, have a look at these websites…      www.5×5x5creativity.org.uk     www.sightlines-initiative.com

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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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