This post discusses the possibilities of materials and material play in children’s learning through art. I draw on the theories of loose parts and new materialism to argue that materials, including artworks, play an active and participatory role in opening-up divergent thinking and inquiry-led learning in schools, home and informal learning contexts such as art museums.
Why do materials matter?
Materials and material exploration have long been a part of artistic inquiry. Since Frobel’s development of the kindergarten in the late 1700’s, they have also held an important place in early childhood settings. In the 1970’s Simon Nicholson presented the theory of loose parts – the proposition that young children’s creative empowerment comes from the presence of open-ended materials that can be constructed, manipulated and transformed through self-directed play. It is fair to say that material content, including artworks and art materials, hold tremendous possibilities for facilitating children’s inquiry-led learning in new and divergent ways. I consider materials to be one of multiple forces that learning can emerge from in an art museums. Others may include social interaction between people, spatial layout of things and the delivery of curatorial content such as through audio guides or information resources.
As reading and writing are often privileged in school curriculum, experimentation with different materials can provide new opportunities for alternate and aesthetically-driven pedagogies to be produced (check out this blog for how I define pedagogy). This is to say that different materials may encourage different ways of thinking, learning and being. For example, in a previous posts on ‘suggesting as a technique for facilitating children’s learning through art’ I talk about the different cognitive, social, emotional and aesthetic learning pathways that two different materials: plastic cylinders and large paper sheets may present. Whilst the cylinders may provoke explorations around stacking, placing, dismantling, balancing, arrangement and construction, the large paper sheet may suggest gentle movements, swaying, rolling, folding, hiding and enveloping. Through experimentation, the properties and abilities of a material may change, creating new starting points for further inquiry and experimentation.
The active role of materials in art practices and learning
In the arts, different materials such as paint, clay, paper, resin, fabric, wood or plastic can be experimented with in a myriad of ways. In art forms such as dance, live art and socially engaged practices, materials may be slightly more abstract such as the human body, sound, participants and society. I believe that art materials are not just a tool for self-expression or a thing for children to manipulate; they are an active and participatory force in the production of learning and knowledge. For example, check out this lovely video by visual artist Shirazeh Houshiary in which she talks about the active role of materials in her practice:
I really connect with this, especially the comment: “… they are not representation of the form but a pulsation of the form. I am not interested in painting. I am not interested in the processes of making in the conventional sense of representation. I am trying to get into how something works. This process has taught me a huge amount about who I am, which is surprising. It a process of learning for me more than anything else.” The paint and paintings are active, participatory and dynamic in the artist’s creative experimentation.
Art materials as an invitation to experiment
Material play has the ability to encourage emergent thinking processes, allowing children to produce new understandings as well as experiencing the world from multiple perspectives. However, materials also have the ability to be used in static and predictable ways that shut down creativity and divergent thinking. Whilst I do love Instagram feeds and craft blogs that share ideas for children’s art activities, I am cautious that these may unintentionally encourage imitation and fixed ways of using materials with children. This may then reduce the ability for experimental thinking and practices to emerge.
The challenge to me – and everyone working in learning settings with children – is to keep experimenting, keep questioning, keep venturing into the unknown and the yet-to-be-discovered of art, play, materiality and pedagogy.
I am sure many of you have really interesting insights on this topic and it would be lovely to hear them. Why is children’s play with materials important to you? What are your favorite materials to experiment with?
Further links
The Institute of Making at the University College of London has a great online material library – perfect for anyone who likes to nerd out about different material forms: http://www.instituteofmaking.org.uk/materials-library
This post looks at the Slow Art Collective’s ‘Children’s Sensory Lab’ (January 8-21, 2017) at C3 Gallery in Melbourne, Australia.
Last week I visited the Children’s Sensory Art Lab at C3 Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. The lab was created Dylan Martorell and Chaco Kato from the Slow Art Collective – an interdisciplinary artistic group dedicated to exploring creative practices and the ethics of environmental sustainability, materiality, DIY culture and participation. The collective describe ‘slow art’ as:
“… the slow exchanges of value rather than the fast, monetary exchange of value. It is about the slow absorption of culture through community links by creating something together and blurring the boundary between the artists and viewer. It is a sustainable arts practice, not an extreme solution; a reasonable alternative to deal with real problems in contemporary art practice.” (Slow Art Collective website)
The Sensory Art Lab featured six different material environments spread out over the C3 Gallery space. These included a dedicated room for babies and toddlers, a giant loom and an archery area where children could shoot arrows at drum symbols (pics below)! A commonality between the activities was a focus on art making or aesthetic exploration through art. The Lab had an endearingly D.I.Y feel to it. Many of the materials were either recycled or everyday items being used in unfamiliar ways, giving a slightly eclectic and ingenious atmosphere to the show.
My favourite activity was the loom, a simple concept with high creative potential. The design of the weaving apparatus encouraged social interaction between people making textiles, opening up the possibility for new connections between people, materials and things.
Below are some pictures from the show. The collective also have a great website featuring all of their projects. Check it out: https://www.slowartcollective.com
The ‘audible touch space’ – an area designed especially for children aged 1-2 years and their carers. Babies and toddlers were able to touch the silver triangles that had motion sensors connected to them with pre-programmed sounds
A bucket of material off-cuts, ribbons, wool and thread
The archery area – children could fire arrows at the drum symbols, making loud bangs of sound
In this activity, children could make paper basketballs then throw them at the drum kits. Each snare drum (I think this is what they are called?!) was set at a different pitch, making different bass notes as the balls hit them.
This post looks at the National Gallery of Victoria’s slick new ‘Triennal’ blockbuster exhibition, including the gallery’s dedicated children’s space ‘Hands on: We make carpet for kids.’
I have spent the past few weeks in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia escaping the bleak English winter. During this time I have been fortunate enough to break up my thesis writing with beach swims and time with family and friends.
Last week I headed into Southbank to checked out the National Gallery of Victoria’s new contemporary art exhibition, Triennial. The exhibition is the first of what I presume will be a series of exhibitions held every three years that aim to showcase ‘the world of art and design now.’ The day I visited, the gallery was absolutely heaving with visitors young and old. I had actually never seen so many people inside an Australian art museum before. It was great to see the gallery so full of life.
The Triennial features an array of new modern and contemporary artwork from around the globe. There are also a bunch of newly commissioned, super slick, very Instagram-able installations including Kusama’s ‘Flower obsession,’ Ron Mueck’s ‘Mass,’ teamLab’s “Moving creates vortices and vortices create movement’ and Alexandra Kehayoglou’s beautiful ‘Santa Cruz River.’ The show is ambitious, polished and lively.
The Triennial’s dedicated children’s space, ‘Hands on: We make carpet for kids’ (2017) was comprised of four parts: a colourful wall where children could stick on triangular velcro pieces, a ‘maze challenge’ where children could poke pieces of rope through a plywood wall, an area where children could stick styrofoam pool noodles onto wooden knobs and a floor activity where children could make patterns using colourful wooden triangles (pics below). At first glance, the space looked immaculate. Lots of colours, beautiful wall-mounted installations for children to look at. The space was packed with young families who all seemed to be having lots of fun. It was also really inspiring to see the gallery making such significant financial investments in children’s activities. There appeared to be a gallery staff member stationed at each section greeting people and sorting materials.
At the same time I felt like something fundamental was missing from the children’s activities. While in the space I began to consider what exactly it is I love about art and learning. To me, the arts and education have allowed me to continuously think about and connect with the world in new and different ways. Artistic experimentation has allowed me to produce new relationships between myself, other people, ideas and the world around me. Looking at the children’s activities, I felt like there were limited opportunities for children to engage in deep artistic and creative experimentation. For example, in the rope activity, children were presented with small pieces of the material all cut to the same length. An instruction sign told people to put the rope into the holes. What children can and cannot do is nearly entirely pre-constructed and fixed.
I am really interested in children’s learning environments that are designed to encourage creative experimentation and are responsive to what emerges from this. For example, selecting materials based on their ability to transform (for example, clay has the ability to change form through adding or removing water), introducing art tools, equipment, artistic techniques or different conceptual resources that could encourage people to extend, challenge and complexify their thinking through art over time.
At the same time, everyone seemed to be having fun and perhaps that is the most important thing. Also, due to the sheer volume of visitors, the gallery may not have been able to cope with children spending more than two minutes on each activity.
The NGV Triennial is a fun museum experience. There are also some incredible artworks in the exhibition. High-brow theme park or contemporary art show – you decide!
I was fortunate enough to recently spend a month in California, mainly in and around San Francisco. During this time I visited a handful of children’s learning spaces and met with a bunch of lovely, passionate people working in both formal and informal learning contexts. The places listed below are places that I visited or that came highly recommended. I hope you find these equally as inspiring as I did!
A crazy drawing/painting machine/printer that appears to be programmed by a Raspberry Pi on display at The Exploratorium.
The Brightworks School
Founded by Gever Tulley who also started The Tinkering School, Brightworks is a project-based learning heaven that ‘weaves learning and life experiences together.’ In the every day runnings of the school, children are put into mixed-aged group teams and encouraged to investigate real-world problems collectively. ‘The Arc’ (I interpret this term to mean the pedagogical principles that drive the learning processes at the school) consists of three phases: exploration, expression and exposition. Learners move through these cycles, allowing for the development, integration and contextualisation of skills and knowledge.
Interested in hearing more about this approach to learning? The Brightworks school run a ‘Brightworks Curious Educators Tour’ approximately once a month that you can book into. Details can be found on their website. Gever also has an awesome TED talk on ‘life lessons through tinkering’ that looks at children’s experiences at The Tinkering School.
AltSchool
Max Ventilla, a former Google executive, created Altschool after he could not find an appropriate school to send his daughter to. Altschools are lab schools that utilise an array of new technologies to create personalised learning environments for its students. Fundamentally opposed to the American government’s standardisation curriculum, AltSchooler’s learning is driven by their interests, passions and skills under a ‘Common Core’ curriculum. Nicknamed ‘Montessori 2.0,’ the schools works closely with entrepreneurs and engineers to develop new technologies that allow students and teachers to grade and document learning in diverse ways. The New Yorker published an extensive article, ‘Learn Differently,’ on the startup last year. I also found this talk by Max Ventilla particularly informative.
Unfortunately I was unable to visit AltSchool while in SF. I was/still am really interested in learning more the relationship between assessment and the development of the apps being used and how these influence one another.
SFMOMA
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art re-opened in 2016 after major renovations. An epicenter for contemporary art in the Bay Area, the art museum is also a sensory-rich environment for young audiences. From my understandings the museum does not run specific programmes or have a dedicated area for children but there is an array of artworks that may capture the curiosities and imaginations of children. These include Dan Flavin’s luminous installation on level 5, Richard Serra’s ‘Sequence’ and Morris Lewis’ technicolour ‘Untitled’ painting (pictured below). With such an incredibly diverse and amazing mix of modern and contemporary art, it seems like the museum has great potential to further develop children’s learning programmes in the future. The Gallery has also put together an online museum guide for visiting with the little-ies.
Deep in the heart of SOMA’s Yerba Buena Gardens sits the Children’s Creativity Museum. The museum features an array of different ‘labs’ such as an animation studio, a tech lab, a music studio and community lab that aim ‘to nurture creativity and collaboration in all children and families.’ The day I visited, the museum was pumping. It is clearly a popular destination for young families living in San Francisco with lots of activities for children to play and make in. The museum certainly has a slightly commercial feel to it, as I often find in American children’s museums. An additional after thought I had was in relation to the separation of the different labs. I wonder what would happen if the tech lab, music studio and community lab became one big space for making and exploring across disciplines and art forms? Check it out: https://creativity.org
The Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium
You might notice I write a lot about the Tinkering Studio on this blog but it is just because I truly believe in inquiry-based learning through play, which is what they do so brilliantly. Housed in The Exploratorium and overlooking the sparkling Bay, the museum’s mission is “to create inquiry-based experiences that transform learning worldwide” through explorations of science, art and human perception. The Tinkering Studio is not just for young children, it is a space for everyone to play, make, construct and deconstruct ideas and understandings about the world.
A pic taken in a light play/Scratch Jnr activity in The Tinkering Studio.
I really connect with The Tinkering Studio’s emphasis on curiosity as the driver for learning. This manifests itself in numerous ways including visitor’s learning during drop-in activities, teacher’s learning at professional development workshops and also (and maybe most importantly) in relation to the learning of the museum team. As an outsider I see it as a continuous process of learning together and that is inspiring. At the same time, the understanding of learning underpinning the practice seems so much more complex than just giving children agency. The activities on offer such as the marble machines, wind tubes and paper circuits are well-considered ‘problem spaces’ where explorations of interconnecting concepts happens through material experimentation. I saw a great quote on the wall of the museum by the American artist Jasper Johns:
“When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.”
I related to this concept that new experiences and ideas keep our minds and bodies awake. Also that one’s desire to continuously strive for what is yet to come into existence or be discovered is a life force. The Tinkering Studio also has a great blog that the team use to share projects and ideas.
There is an array of other innovative startups/play/learning spaces in and from the Bay Area not mentioned above. To name a few: the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Wonderful Idea Co., the Khan Lab School, GCE Lab School, the Berkeley Adventure Playground and the Museum of Children’s Arts. I also highly recommend the Prelinger library for their ‘how to’ and ‘maker’ sections. The library is also a great place to get some general life inspiration. Can’t wait to visit California again!
P.S. Thank you Ryan Jenkins for the awesome recommendations!
This post is coming to you from sunny California! I absolutely love this part of the world. Yesterday I visited a very fun ‘Noguchi Playscapes’ exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition explores the sculptural playscapes of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988). This post presents some of the key artworks and themes from the show including the role of public sculpture in bringing art and creativity to everyday living.
An image from the exhibition at SFMOMA
“Noguchi’s desire was to bring fine art into the context of everyday living. His lifelong involvement in the design of playgrounds and “play sculpture” stemmed from this ideology and belief in the educational potential of sculptured forms for physical use by children” (Larrivee, 2011).
“The playground, instead of telling the child what to do (swing here, climb there), becomes a place for endless exploration, of endless opportunity for changing play. And it is a thing of beauty as the modern artist has found beauty in the modern world” Isamu Noguchi (1967).
Noguchi Playscapes revisits the work of pioneering artist and landscape architect, Isamu Noguchi. The exhibition presents a myriad of Noguchi’s designs, sketches, models and archival images used to construct his sculptural playscape. These colourful, quirky and even downright wacky works explore his ‘vision for new experiences of art, education, and humanity through play’ (SFMOMA website, 2017).
Noguchi strove to create public spaces that sparked imagination through people’s interactions with different forms, surfaces, textures and shapes. Children’s play served as a creative and experimental process for engaging with these spaces. The role of sculpture in the urban landscape allowed for Noguchi’s playscapes to bring together the powerful combination of aesthetics, functionality and human’s ability play.
Noguchi believed that: “sculpture in the public realm is an aesthetic and cultural tool capable of reconciling social inhibitions and individuality. This shaped his vision for the democratisation of art, leading him to devise outdoor play structures that encourage creative interaction as a way of learning” (Noguchi Playscapes, 2017).
Noguchi also understood “creative play as a way of learning about and participating in the world, emphasising imagination, especially that of children, given that they represented the future that would be rebuilt by the fractured postwar society” (Garcia & Larrivee, 2016).
Playscapes such as ‘The U.S Pavilion Expo” (1970, pictured above) bring together re-moulding of the earth with sculptural play equipment. I found designs that were devoid of equipment such as ‘Play Mountain’ (1933, pictured below) particularly thought-provoking. In the absence of swings, slides and see-saws, the design proposed moulded and hollowed earth that created slopes for rolling, sliding and sledding down.
Children’s experience in the playscape would therefore be driven by physical exercise such as running, jumping and climbing over the organic forms and geometric shapes of the earth (Larrivee, 2011). ‘Play Mountain’ was a radical proposition for children’s play in 1930’s New York with nearly all public playgrounds being produced from mass-constructed, pre-designed equipment. The design was unsurprisingly rejected by New York Parks Commission and never realised into an actual playscape.
I was surprised to discover that only two of Noguchi’s public playscapes were actually realised in his lifetime – one in Kodomo No Kuni park in Yokohama (this was torn down one year after it was built) and the second in the Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia (pictured below). Out of all the wacky models and sketches of playscapes featured in the exhibition, ‘Piedmont Park’ seems one of the simplest and least extravagant. Perhaps it was also one of the more straight forward and least risky designs to build. Fed-up with government bureauracy, Noguchi chose to work the rest of his career on largely private commissions liaising with architects, musicians and theatre designers as a way of escaping the restrictive health and safety regulations of creating public play spaces (Larrivee, 2011).
Noguchi Playscapes is on display at SFMOMA from July 15 – November 26, 2017. You can also visit The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York to view a more comprehensive body of work by this amazing artist.
Art. Play. Children. Pedagogy. will be on holidays for the next couple of weeks. The next post will make its appearance on Friday September 1, 2017.
Piedmont Park park, Atlanta. Built 1975-76 from basswood. Image: hermanmiller.com
References
Garcia, M & Larrivee, S (2016). Isamu Noguchi: Playscapes, RM/Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo; Bilingual edition.
This post features an interview with Emma Spencer, Family Learning Coordinator at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK).
Image credit: Jane Hewitt
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park sits upon 500 acres of jolly green parkland that an Australian who has never visited rural England may be pitifully excited to see. The open-air gallery won the 2014 Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year and is also home to the National Arts Education Archive. In 2014 the Park was awarded a three- year grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to conduct an action-research project looking at the development of its family-learning programme. I recently spoke with Emma Spencer about the project’s findings and future plans for early years learning at the gallery.
Could you please give some background on the action research project? What were your initial ideas and motivations?
Starting out, the key focus of the research was around bringing people from the community together with the Park. We wanted to use the project to change how we connect with families. Families come to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park regardless to experience the beautiful natural space, however we really wanted to think about creating a more considered and in-depth offer for families. The focus of the research has changed slightly over time, especially in relation to how we used the early year’s space.
What happens in art galleries is quite distinctly different from what happens in science centres or natural history museums. This was a key consideration entering the research. We also wanted family’s experiences to be centred on the connection between nature and art.
The research project is now entering its third and final year. What have been the key findings to date?
The first year of the action-research project was focused upon looking at school-aged children and their connection with the Park. We wanted to use the first stage of research to understand how the Park can engage with families in new ways. So with these families we tried out various different activities to see what they liked, what they were interested in, how they behaved and different methods of engagement.
Image credit: Jane Hewitt
The family model that we use at YSP is one-on-one approach. So rather than being the whole family coming together, we encourage one parent to bring one child. So therefore the project was not looking at issues between siblings. Instead we wanted it to focus on and encourage really meaningful time between one child and their parent.
Data was collected over four half days at the sculpture park and four half days in the education settings. We worked with eight families from children’s centres and nurseries in Wakefield. All families involved in the initial stage of research had children aged two and up. Over the eight days we trialled different creative activities with the families. We then did in-depth evaluation on each activity that gave us incredible insight into participants experiences. We were then able to build these findings into the subsequent stages of research.
What types of programming have come out of these initial findings?
Coming out of the first stage of research we were able to identify what sorts of workshops we would need to offer, what resources we need to develop and what we need to do as an organization to engage families. Results indicated the following:
An enclosed children’s outdoor space is both wanted and needed;
Families need to make art in addition to looking at it;
Open-ended resources are essential in supporting families connection with art and nature;
Children behave better outside then inside and are not worried about the weather.
Leading on from this, the second stage of action research comprised of the development of a series of public events for families. These included drop-in days and school holiday activities. The major outcome of the research is the creation of a new family space for under 5’s called Hidden Forrest.
How did you work with artists on the project?
Bryony Pritchard was the main artist we worked with. Bryony has extensive experience in working in children’s art education and is a very reflective practitioner. A key responsibility of hers was designing the creative activities within Hidden Forrest and facilitating these activities on the day. These activities were essentailly provocations that connected children with nature and art.
When developing children’s programmes it really helps to be collaborating with people who have have direct experience working with children and understand how they communicate and think. I did this earlier in my career and this gave me great insight which I was able to bring to my current role that is more focused on research and development.
How has using the action-research process (planning, observing, interpreting and reflecting) benefited the programme’s development?
The difference between everyday practice and action research is that you are constantly thinking, reflecting and making changes. Of course everyone is reflective in this field but having it as a formal research project allowed us to really look at something critically. It un-sticks old patterns of practice and thinking within the organization. This can be particularly useful when working with staff who have been around for a long time – to challenge old ways of thinking.
I have always been a reflective practitioner. I also knew Bryony would be open to trying new things. Using action research allows us to development of an attitude of “if this does not work, this is okay.” This is a really freeing thing for practitioners. When things did not go so well we were able to reflect, discuss and then give ourselves permission to try it again with changes. For example we once tried the same program with a different audience with surprisingly different results.
Sometimes there is a lot of pressure on artists to do it well the first time as they are getting paid a lot of money (and so they should!). However there is an idea that these activties always need to be sparkly and everyone needs to have a fabulous time. The action research enabled us to explore and challenge many ideas around practice. We knew that we would possibly learn a lot of things when it went wrong.
Where do you hope to take the findings from the research? What is your future vision for family learning at YSP?
We are now entering our third year of the research project. The focus is not upon institution-wide training. An interesting thing about action research is that other teams can take findings and re-adjust them to fit with their own context. This training will focus upon things such as how staff talk to families and children who may have very little gallery experience. We hope to also create a regular offer for families.
Family engagement is not just about the learning team. These are institution-wide conversations that need to be had. It takes time to implement such change and to shape how we collectively engage with families.
As part of the first stage of my PhD research I have been visiting a number of ‘creative laboratories’ in cultural and educational settings. In doing so, my aim has been to observe the diverse ways in which interdisciplinary teams of people have approached the construction of children’s creative environments in different contexts.
My PhD is an action research project. This is to say that it is comprised of a series of iterative research cycles, in my case four, which each seek to build upon the findings and reflections of the preceding cycle. Within my project, each cycles proposes to develop, challenge and reflect upon the construction of a critically reflective heuristic thinking tool that will be used to guide conversations between artists, curators, educators and researchers developing creative environments for children in art galleries.
Kusama’s Gleaming Light of the Soul (2008). Louisiana collection.This first stage of action research is referred to as ‘the reconnaissance’ in which an individual revisits and reflects upon what they know about their practice based upon their prior experience. It is also a time to scope out the broader field of practice to assess where one’s practice fits within wider theories, literature and practice. The ambition of doing so is to identify knowledge gaps and concerns around one’s practice which will be addressed in subsequent research cycles. My ‘reconnaissance’ has provided an excellent opportunity to reflect upon my work as a children’s curator. I have always found that one of the best ways to sharpen and deepen my ideas is to connect with people who are interested in similar theoretical concepts (i.e child-centred practice, social constructivism, Reggio Emilia, loose parts theory) but apply them in different ways and in different contexts.
Over the past 12 months I have visited The Tinkering Studio at The Exploratorium, The Atelier Van Licht at the Central Museum in Utretch, the artist-in-residency programme at Lillian de Lissa Children’s Centre & Nursery in Birmingham and the Bay Area Children’s Museum in Sausalito, CA to observe and learn more about the construction of different ‘creative labratory’ approaches. Last month I visited another, the Children’s Wing at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. I had heard numerous colleagues talk about the space over the past few years and was excited to finally have the opportunity to go myself.
Children play in the painting studio on the ground floor of the Children’s Wing. Image credit: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
The Children’s Wing opened in 1994 and is made up of a three-story space purpose-built space especially for children. Whilst I was there I met with one of the artist-educators working on the programme who discussed the team’s approach. The aim of the activities is to encourage children to explore the notion that ‘small-scale experimentation with materials and ideas are the foundations of artworks displayed throughout the gallery.’ Underscoring this premise is an understanding that through encouraging children’s exploration of materials and artistic processes, they will gain a sense of curiosity around the art featured in the gallery spaces.
The Wing consists of five separated spaces each featuring a different craft or creative play activity all of which are supervised by artist educators. Outside the Wing, a Lake Garden extends into the surrounding natural landscape of the Louisiana property. The busiest area appeared to be the permanent painting and clay studio (pictured above), which fills the entire bottom floor of the Wing.
The number of families visiting the space impressed me, especially considering it was a Tuesday morning. Everyone seemed to be having a fun time with many young children making and playing alongside their parents and grandparents. It was fantastic to see the human resource investment put into the space. The artist educators were both greeting families and engaging in reflective conversations with children around what they were making.
Poul Gernes’s The Pyramid, scale model, from an unrealised 1967 concept.
Formalfabet (1966) Form Alphabet.
In addition to the Children’s Wing, I was extremely impressed with the Louisiana. The setting and layout of the museum reminded me a lot of the amazing MONA in Hobart, Australia. When visiting I also highly recommend climbing and sitting on top of the reconstruction of Poul Gernes’s ‘Pyramid’ (pictured above).
NB: The term ‘creative laboratories’ is one that I have constructed and defined within the context of my PhD research and is not a term necessarily used by the institutions discussed. Within the context of my research, creative laboratories are a place where people can go to creatively explore, experiment and freely play with ideas and materials in large variety of ways. The Reggio Emilia approach also often utilises the metaphor of the kindergarten as a laboratory. An expansion of this idea can be found in a recent blog post I wrote for the American website Art Museum Teaching.
The new Tate Modern opened on Friday and it is fantastic. I could post an arty picture of the swish new building or write something about it being a new era for modern art in London. Instead I am going to post a visual representation of an intensely meaningful connection between one visitor and the new exhibition hang. I may be over analysing something that does not need to be analysed – not the first time that has happened – but to me this person has articulated a deep connection between their own human experience and a group of artworks which reflect and represent the complex emotions and thoughts of their life.
“this means my family being pulled together and have to stick together”
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Horizontal Square Reticularia 71/10, 1971. Steel rods and metal beads. Tate collection.
2. “this represents my family coming together.”
Cristina Iglesias, Pavilion Suspened in a Room 1, 2005. Steel. Tate collection.
3. “This represents something different about my family.”
When I questioned the visitor further about this particular artwork they replied along the lines of “well the top one is my mother and she loves us but can be a bit strict sometimes, then there is my Dad below and he works a lot and sleeps on the weekends but is funny and likes to play with us too, then there is my sister – she is nice but she can be mean sometimes and then there is me and I am a mix of everyone but I am also just me too. And we all line up together, just like the blue blocks.”
Donald Judd, Untitled 1980. Steel, aluminium and perspex. Tate collection.
“Instead of just saying: “Go ahead make anything you can imagine”, we are trying to carefully choreograph moments where you enter into a situation and find something of interest to start with. It is not “whatever” you want to build with our light play setup. We are asking: “What do you notice?” “What are you curious about looking at more?” “What might you want to change?” “What might you like to construct now that you have become more familiar with the material?” and so on.” Mike Petrich [1]
This post features a reflection on my visit to the Tinkering Studio at The Exploratorium in San Francisco, USA with a focus upon what art galleries can learn from the Studio’s approach to constructing immersive creative environments for children based on experiential learning and play.
Image credit: tinkering.exploratorium.edu
In August 2015 I participated in a ScratchJr/Light Play prototyping session between the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten group and the Tinkering Studio team at The Exploratorium. The Tinkering Studio, which opened in 2008, is a research and design laboratory housed inside the Exploratorium, a museum devoted to the intersection of art, science and technology. The Studio is an “immersive, active, creative place” [2] for experimentation, investigation, making and hands-on play for all ages. Scientists, artists, programmers and academics frequently take up residence in the studio, working alongside the Tinkering Studio team to create new installations, run programmes and run public forums. I have closely followed the progression of the Tinkering Studio’s programme for a number of years with much admiration. When the opportunity arose to spend an extended period of time in San Francisco, I was eager to connect with the team.
I was particularly interested in learning about two key components of their programme: firstly how an interdisciplinary development team (or ‘communities of practice’) of artists, educators, scientists, programmers, designers and makers, work collaboratively to develop, prototype and construct their creative projects. These projects usually start with a provocation, question or concept that goes through continuous exploration and collaborative development. For example, during the session I participated in, the team were investigating how the Light Play project could be connected with ScratchJr to make usable programmable elements for young children aged 5-7 years. Tinkering activities are not just about putting some art and technology materials on a table and letting kids go nuts, it is ‘highly choreographed, sometimes painstaking, deeply discussed, and a well thought-out discipline, so that we actually can facilitate peoples’ thinking through initial starting points that might lead to complex new directions.’ [3] Secondly, I was interested in how the team observe, reflect and makes changes to these immersive, creative spaces over time in response to new ideas, new audiences and new contexts in which they are presented.
Throughout the session, we explored and played around with programmable elements such as Arduino boards, circuit blocks and LED lights connected to a new version of ScratchJr app. Through a wireless connection between the parts and the app, we created moving, flashing light vignettes such as this:
After each round of prototyping, the group came back together to share interesting findings such as what worked, what didn’t, what else could be added to the ScratchJr programme and the light materials to enhance the activity and creative possibilities. In this reflective discussion, questioning and exploration were valued above certainty and claims of expertise. During our prototyping and discussions, I observed three aspects of the Tinkering Studio team’s practice which I believe to be key considerations in the future development of creative environments for young children in art galleries:
1) The need for quality social support by educators within the space whose role is to guide and challenge participant’s learning (NB: not direct it). These educators need to be responsive to changing practices in children’s learning and curiosities and make modifications to materials and the arrangement of the space as a result of this.
2) The need to find a balance between the presentation of open-ended materials and structure within the activities. This balance is continuously changing depending upon participants and the context in which they are being presented. Educators and designers need to be aware and responsive to this.
3) The use of open source information sharing. The Tinkering Studio’s team have a frequently updated blog which documents the prototyping, exploration of ideas, new initiatives, successes and failures of projects. The blog is not used as an extended marketing tool (let’s be honest, this is how most art galleries use them) but as a vesicle for generating critical collaborative dialogue and disseminating discoveries, learning, new partnerships in an immediate and direct way to an international network of makers, programmers, educators, artists and practitioners. These ideas and projects are also shared through publications, public events, Coursera courses and professional development sessions for teachers and museum professionals. Through this, the practice of tinkering is able to become more dialogic, inclusive and internationally widespread. The Exploratorium is also a part of a new international PlayFutures network established to create a global community committed to the explanation of opportunities for young children’s learning through play.
The learning processes explored through tinkering are not just connected to the artistic process. It is the creative process used by artists to explore understandings of the world through experimentation, discovery-based play and expression of these complexities through making. Through my PhD action-research project and work as a children’s curator I hope to bring these aspects more fully into my own practice through developing a collaborative and sustainable dialogic framework between artists, curators, young children and their parents that can be used to construct immersive early years environments in art galleries.
In a city that so strongly values creative innovation, risk taking and original thinking, it seems fitting that it is also home to a place that is championing people’s need to direct their own learning through creative play.
“People need ‘tools’ that empower them to work independently, they need these tools and technology to make the most of the energy and imagination each has… society needs to project individual skills and voices, people need to move, to think and have the means to communicate with one another. People cannot make everything for themselves, they need to collaborate and share in a community for it to function.’ Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (1973).
This post features an interview with Elizabeth Rood, Vice President of Education Strategy and Director of the Centre for Childhood Creativity at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, California in which she discusses the timeliness, importance and challenges of developing the world’s first early years Fab Lab.
Children and parents create designs using a laser cutter during a prototyping session at the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Image credit: Bay Area Discovery Museum
“We want to shift the way that people think about learning so it is not only based on transmission and close-ended answers. Instead we want to create a rich environment that promotes design, building, construction and an excitement around learning through technology!” Elizabeth Rood
On May 14, 2016 the Bay Area Discovery Museum will open the first early years Fab Lab designed especially for children aged 3 to 10 years old. The Fab Lab movement came out of the MIT Media Lab in the early 2000’s with the original laboratory aiming to explore how technology can power under-served communities through access to information. Labs typically consisting of a small digital workshop space featuring digitally controlled tools such as 3D printers, design software, laser cutters and technology-powered products which individuals to bring their personal ideas to life. There are currently around 600 labs running around the world in museums, libraries, schools and community spaces. Fab Labs are closely linked, yet distinctly different from the maker, DIY, hacker and open source movements through their focus upon design, engineering and creativity.
I visited the Bay Area Discovery Museum in August 2015 whilst in San Francisco doing an artist residency at the Prelinger Library. I was extremely impressed by the museum’s commitment to child-centred practice and the development of an interdisciplinary creative learning pedagogy based on hands-on play.
Louisa Penfold: Elizabeth thanks so much for taking the time to talk this afternoon. The Fab Lab sounds amazing and I am sure there will be lots of people very interested its development. Perhaps we could start by hearing about the value of creativity in childhood and what unique offerings the Bay Area Discovery Museum provide in relation to that?
Elizabeth Rood: One of the things that people get caught up on is whether or not kids actually can be creative when many definitions of creativity are about having some sort of meaningful output that is not just personal but helpful towards the universe and the world. Yet it is really clear from the research that the quality of kids imaginative play is actually a significant predictor of creativity in their adult life. We actually authored a paper recently and one of the key findings in it was the way in which the quality of kids play in childhood, especially if they are able to access rich environments, ends up equipping them with the creative and innovative skills needed for future success. Therefore a lot of value is placed on making sure kids have really rich creative experiences when they are young that will set them up for life. The other finding from that paper was that it zoned in on seven key teachable skills which allow children to develop into more creative adults.
The research shows that creativity is influenced more by your environment and less so by your inborn genetics… so we are more likely to have our parent’s political views passed onto us than creativity.
So rather than focus on this elusive idea of creativity as an inborn trait, if we recognize that these seven habits of mind that help nurture kids and support their growth, then it will lead to them becoming really creative people.
Here at the museum our mission is all about creativity and in our community work we are helping people see the creative potential in all kinds of thinking across different disciplines and not just art. Certainly art is one area where kids are able to build a lot of creativity but as a museum we really want people to realize that deep thinking in math is about creativity and being a really good scientist is about creativity and being an engineer is about creativity.
3D printers will feature in the Fab Lab. Image credit: Bay Area Children’s Museum
LP: Yes, for sure. I am interested in the comment you made about the link between a rich environment and creativity. From your research and from your experience working in this field, what are the qualities of an environment that constitute a rich experience for children? ER: A lot of it has to do with whether or not children are empowered and invited to chart their own course or whether a model is put up by adults, or their peers which says ‘this is what is supposed to happen.’ For example, if you walk into an art creation space and there is a model and an attitude which says ‘okay, now you make it.’ Or another example could be in regards to a science experiment where an attitude may be that there is only one way to go about doing it. This idea that one needs to learn what the experts know and mimic it needs to be turned on its head. We need to put kids in the driver seat!
First of all encouraging the idea that there is not one right path or one right answer. A simple example of this is that we don’t ask kids ‘what is 2 + 8?’ we ask them ‘what are all the different ways you can get to 10?’ Even just in a small flip like that, you could encourage the mind to do much deeper thinking. And also you are setting up the framework of their being multiple right answers and through that a value is placed on originality and original thinking and through that we are teaching our kids that they don’t have to mimic the people that have come before them. So that’s a really big piece of a rich environment.
Another aspect is that research clearly demonstrates that cognitive flexibility is a huge part of creativity so the more we can experience new things and expose our children to diverse ways of thinking about the world, the more the brain becomes wired to promote creative thinking, new ideas and awareness.
The final part of a rich environment links back to the importance of pretend play. I think that sometimes people think that pretend play is something we should be doing to ages five or six but then after that comes this social commentary that it’s not healthy or normal to engage in imaginary play. However if you look at people who have one Nobel Prizes and done amazing ambitious things in their lives there is a huge number of those people who had very rich imaginary worlds pushing into their adolescence and adulthood allowing for the construction of rich imaginary worlds. This allows for a different kind of thinking about reality. These are the kinds of a snapshot of experiences that we would like kids to have at the museum.
Children and museum staff play with a programmable car Image credit: Bay Area Children’s Museum
LP: So leading on from those ideas of cognitive flexibility, process-based learning and pretend play, in terms of the development of the Early Years Fab Lab at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, what sorts of skills will children learn within the space? I say this in the sense that may parents and teachers have great fear around children using screen-based technology such as iPads and computers as they it as passive consumption of media that takes away time from hand-on creative learning. How will the Fab Lab promote creativity and promote creative skills?
ER: I think part of what we are trying to do is establish a new model of what high quality use of technology in the early years can be. A key quality, you know you have visited the museum, there is no technology on site. This is going to be the first piece of technology at the museum. Part of the reason for this is that we want to promote pretend play and rich imaginary worlds and that often screens, media and technology can be set up to say ‘this is the right way, the right answer to this question.’ A lot of the Apps that are out there are close ended, they made have an educational value such as teaching vocabulary, but they don’t tend to be open-ended. So for us, part of us is about making sure that technology is a tool for creation as opposed to passive consumers of the technology. So that’s a huge difference!
Part of the danger of screen time is not the screen itself but the way in which adults are using them as babysitters.
Within the Fab Lab there is a screen that kids design on, more specifically a touch screen which children and parents are able to use side by side. And the experience doesn’t end there, they then fabricate either a 2D or 3D printout of what they designed so they are using the technology as a tool to make something. Part of what Fab Lab does is linking the artistic and design processes with some of the science, engineering and math concepts to help kids build the kind of underlying design thinking that is really critical in fields like engineering or architecture and any human-centred design field.
LP: So what tools and equipment will feature in the Fab Lab?
ER: At the moment we have Surface Pro tablets and the main reason for that is they have both a touch-screen and ability to plug-in and use keyboards or a mouse. So that is the main computer software that we will use. There will also be iPads as some of the software is optimised with them. In terms of fabrication equipment we have laser cutters that can be used with wood, plastic and cardboard. Then there is a vinyl cutter which is fun for making stickers with the little kids, mainly for use with clip art. There will also be 3D printers which will be running in the space but more for demonstration purposes than anything else as it’s not the right tool to use with young children. It’s a real buzz word, especially in the Bay area so it’s important that we can demonstrate the technology.
The other machines we are prototyping with are small C2C routers and table top routers. We will also have an industrial sewing machine which will be fun. Then there will be simpler things that are not so much about fabrication but more about technology and engineering such as circuit and coding games and toys.
LP: I’m curious to hear a bit more about the development of the technology going into the Lab. The design software and high-tech tools used in traditional Fab Labs have been created for adult use. How has the development team built the technology so that it is safe and accessible for young children?
ER: Well, because we are a museum and we need to have robust public programs experience and we also do a lot of work in the formal education sector with teachers, we have a two-pronged strategy of how we are going about this. So in working with schools, there is software that just was released called Fab@School Maker Studio which is really designed for kids ages 9 and up. It’s been built for in school classroom teachers to be able to do building and hands-on learning but not using very expensive fabrication equipment. It is using something that is called the silhouette printer that is a lot more affordable than 3D printers. We are using this software and in conversation with the software developers to simplify the interface such as using a touch screen instead of a keyboard and mouse. So we are developing something new from something that has already been released.
However this software does not necessarily work in the drop-in space as the program is very math based. It needs to be math-based as otherwise teachers would not be able to use it. At the moment in the United States there are only two things are being assessed which are literacy and math. So we are really thinking of how we can use the Fab Lab to do more hands-on learning.
Fab Labs are really at the intersection of active, experiential learning and technology. It is about linking creative, artistic power with science, engineering and math.
In the public program space, this doesn’t really work. Kids need to have something that is elegant and cool in which they can create something to take home and with a bit more of a wow factor in which they think ‘I want to keep doing this.’ So for the public program space we have landed on Adobe Illustrator, partially because it is the industry standard for fabrication and when you use it on a touch screen it automatically simplifies the interface. So it’s naturally more accessible for kids.
LP: What have been some of the most interesting discoveries you have had so far within the development process?
ER: We have been surprised at how easily kids are using Adobe Illustrator. Kids as young as five have been easily using it and that has been a shock to us. It is really interesting how kids quickly pick up software that has been designed intuitively and elegantly.
Another thing that was really interesting is that parents are more engaged in the early years Fab Lab than they are in other areas of the museum. There is more reciprocal learning going on because it is new for the parents as well. So that has been exciting to see parents jumping in and doing the design alongside their children. Also Dads have been really engaged in the prototyping sessions which is great and we hope that this is a pattern that will continue over the coming months. Overall the adults are really more engaged!
LP: I am sure there will be many people and organisations that will be incredibly interested in your experience of creating the Fab Lab. Do you have any plans to share your findings with the wider community?
ER: Yes, absolutely! We are currently looking into getting funding to get a high-level complex AV system so that we can do remote-in so that people can watch kids in the space from far away. The Fab Lab movement is international and there are people all over the world that are interested in this and part of what we want to do is to share what we learn. This will partially be through the use of video in the space so that people in Belgium, Columbia and Mexico can all watch what is going on. Part of why we are so excited about being part of the Fab Lab movement is because it is international. We will also do writing and presentations to accompany this and possibly a bigger picture research project.
Part of why we are so excited about connecting with the Fab movement as opposed to just the maker movement is that the maker movement has a very open-ended ethos in which children come in and experience what they want. What we are trying to do is build more of a bridge between that open-ended processes and STEM learning. Through this we hope to say that ‘through doing this kind of building, lower income kids from subsidized preschools are learning about shapes in a stronger way that predicts greater achievement over their lifetime.’
A father and son play with cardboard cut outs from a laser cutter during a prototyping session. Image credit: Bay Area Children’s Museum
Further Links
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2013). Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Harper Perennial.
Fab Foundation website (2016). FabFoundation.org, viewed March 30, 2016.
Heading, H. (2015). Inspiring a Generation to Create: Critical Components of Creativity in Children, Centre for Childhood Creativity, Sausalito.
Singer, D.; Golinkoff, R.; & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2009). Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press, London.
The focus is not upon institution-wide training. An interesting thing about action research is that other teams can take findings and re-adjust them to fit with their own context. This training will focus upon things such as how staff talk to families and children who may have very little gallery experience. We hope to also create a regular offer for families.
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Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Horizontal Square Reticularia 71/10, 1971. Steel rods and metal beads. Tate collection.
Art. Play. Children. Pedagogy. 