The role of materials in children’s learning through art

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

My friend Nina Odegard has written a brilliant article on children’s learning with recycled ‘junk’ materials. Nina formally ran a creative recycle centre in Norway: http://www.academia.edu/14201590/When_matter_comes_to_matter_working_pedagogically_with_junk_materials

Professor Pat Thomson, Nina Odegard and I recently did a conference symposium on children’s material play. Check it out: https://louisapenfold.com/2017/12/06/childrens-learning-with-new-found-and-recycled-stuff-symposium-at-aare/

Here is the link to my blog post on Simon Nicholson’s theory of loose parts: https://louisapenfold.com/2016/05/23/simon-nicholson-on-the-theory-of-loose-parts/

I also love the book ‘Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood Education’ by Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Sylvia Kind and Laurie Kocher.

The Children’s Sensory Art Lab with the Slow Art Collective at C3 Gallery, Australia

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

I loved this giant ‘archi-loom.’ The Slow Art Collective did a spectacular version of this at Art Play a few years ago.

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.

NGV Triennal in Melbourne, Australia

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.

Pictured: teamLab ‘Moving creates vortices and vortices create movement’ (2017)

Yayoi Kusama ‘Flower Obsession’ (2017)

Ron Mueck ‘Mass’ (2016-2017)

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!

‘Children’s learning with new, found and recycled stuff’ symposium at AARE

This post discusses the symposium presentation ‘Material play: children’s learning with new, found and recycled ‘stuff’ given by Professor Pat Thomson, Nina Odegard and Louisa Penfold at the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) in Canberra, Australia.

Image: Bradley Cummings

On November 27, 2017 Pat Thomson (University of Nottingham), Nina Odegard (University College of Oslo and Akershus) and myself (University of Nottingham) presented at the AARE conference on young children’s learning with materials through play. Julianne Moss from Deakin University was the session discussant. The symposium was put together as a result of our common research interest in material-led play in early childhood education.

The symposium was built upon the proposition that many educators and artists working with young children are committed to play-based practices and understand this as critical to individual and social learning. The session focused specifically on early years arts-orientated play through asking: when children are ‘doing art’ play what are they learning with the materials they choose? The presentations explored the idea that when children are playing with materials they are simultaneously:

• learning about concepts such as line, pattern and form;
• learning about the properties and potentials of materials such as how they can be pushed, pilled, stretched and transformed;
• learning what materials are and do in the world;
• being called and directed by the materials, forming possible selves with materials and forming new relations with the world
• being given the possibilities to work with materials without having to name, define or categorize what they are doing

Why is this important? Academics and education practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in ways that humans can and need to be de-centred in order to take account of the importance the material, both organic and inorganic, worlds in which we live. This is essential in creating discourses and practices that offer hopeful action in an ecologically and ethically challenged world. This also comes at a time when policy makers around the world increasingly position play-based early childhood curriculum as trivial and not sufficiently focused on knowledge and skills. Consequentially, we identify an urgent need to push further with discussion on why materials matter in early childhood play-based arts programmes and projects. Our concern was to not only explore and explain the importance of play in early childhood and to promote the value of the arts, but also to broaden our explanations of what this is.

Young children’s thinking with natural materials in art museums

Image: Louisa Penfold

Louisa’s presentation explored the invitations natural materials such as logs, leaves, sticks, stones and clay offer in young children’s play in art museums. Data generated in an early year’s art studio session at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, was used to consider the encounters (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2017) between children, artists, curators, artworks, materials and the museum space. Lenz-Taguchi’s notion of intra-active pedagogies (2010) – where one’s attention shifts from interpersonal relationships to the relations between humans and non-human entities – was drawn upon to consider children’s learning with and through artworks and materials in the art museum.

Descriptive examples of visual documentation including photography and video footage was discussed in relation to how the ‘stuff’ curated for the art studio provoked open-ended possibilities for children’s thinking and learning. The presentation concluded with the suggestion that through thinking with materials, new pedagogies are able to be constructed that allow artists, learning curators, children and their families to continuously produce and reconsider the relations between themselves, others, artworks, materials and the natural world.

Imagining immanent didactics

Image: Louisa Penfold

Nina’s paper focused on the concepts of aesthetics and aesthetic explorations, ethics and how these open possibilities for creative thinking, doing and being. Concepts of new materialism were discussed in relation to the potential they bring for expanded discourses and practices relating to recycling, sustainability and consumption.

The presentation drew upon data generated in a ReMida creative recycle centre in Norway. Results suggested that children were ‘rhizomatic thinkers’ (Dahlberg, 2016, p. 131) in their aesthetic explorations of recycled materials in which children’s learning shifted between disciplines to make use of the ‘vibrant matter’ (Bennet, 2010) and ‘how matter comes to matter’ (Barad, 2008). Nina also focused on pedagogical practice in which children’s process itself is valued, and there is a reduced or no focus on the result (Dahlberg, 2016). This builds on previous research out of the ReMida centre (Odegard, 2016) that argued that recycled materials can open up to the discovery of new ‘hidden’ pedagogical spaces, that produce meeting places for the emergence of new ideas (Odegard, 2012). The children´s exploration with vibrant matter like recycled materials seems to evoke creativity, curiosity, problem-solving and narrate stories. Through this, the paper argued for a paradigm shift away from the neoliberal way of measuring and categorizing learning and towards an emphasis on the collective and creative pedagogical processes.

What can rope do with us? Agency/power and freedom/captivity in art play.

Image: Bradley Cummings

Pat’s paper, co-written with Anton Franks, discussed an ongoing ethnographic study conducted within the ‘World without walls’ programme run by Serpentine Galleries in London. The programme supports artists undertaking residencies in one early childhood centre in central London. The residencies focus on different kinds of art/play that draw upon the artist’s practice and selection of materials for the programme. The presentation discussed data generated from Albert Potrony’s residency in which the artist elected to use large material objects such as card, plastic, foam and rope.

Throughout the sessions, numerous children were drawn to/called by the rope (Bennett, 2010). Perhaps unexpectedly, the children wrapped/tied up their teachers and the learning curator with the rope. The data suggested an explicit exploration of the kinds of power-laden relationships that exist between adults and children in educational settings. Drawing on field notes, photographs and interviews, the paper presented an analysis of the materials on offer and their affordances. The presentation concluded considering the material differences made by, with and through the rope, and probe further the ways in which it co-produced caring and ethical experimentations with power, agency, captivity and freedom.

Following the presentations, attendees had an opportunity to play with an array of materials arranged in the symposium space. As a group we then asked and explored questions such as why were particular materials chosen and not others? What was possible with the materials and what wasn’t? What about the play experience can be put into words and what can’t? Did you feel a desire/need to name, categorize or define your installation? What senses were used, and what feelings were evoked through playing with the materials?

Overall, we hoped that the symposium shared thinking and opened up new discussions around early childhood education, play, the arts and materialism. We were inspired by the questions and discussion amongst the group throughout the presentation and hope to build upon this in the future.

Image: Bradley Cummings

Image: Bradley Cummings

References

Barad, K. (2008). Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. In S. Alaimo & S. J. Hekman (Eds.), Material feminisms (pp. 120-157). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Bennet, J. (2010). Vibrant matter, a poltical ecology of things: Duke University Press.

Dahlberg, G. (2016). An ethico- aesthetic paradigm as an alternative discourse to the quality assurance discourse. 17(1), 124-133. doi:10.1177/1463949115627910

Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. New York, NY: Routledge.

Odegard, N. (2012). When matter comes to matter – Working pedagogically with junk materials. Education Inquiry, 3(3), 387-400.

Odegard, Nina, & Rossholt, Nina. (2016). In-between spaces. Tales from a Remida. In Ann Beate Reinertsen (Ed.), Becoming Earth. A Post Human Turn in Educational Discourse Collapsing Nature/Culture Divides. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Pacini-Ketchabaw, V; Kind, S; & Kocher, L. (2017). Encounters with materials in early childhood education. New York, NY: Routledge.

Serpentine Galleries’ Play as Radical Practice toolkit

This post looks at Serpentine Galleries’ ‘Play as Radical Practice’ toolkit, a creative resource produced between the Gallery’s learning team, artist Albert Potrony and the Portman Early Childhood Centre (UK).

Image credit: Serpentine Galleries

In 2014, the Serpentine learning team commenced a series of artist residencies with the Portman Early Childhood Centre in Westminster, London (UK) run as part of their Changing Play programme. Changing Play aims to explore the possibilities of play through exploring current practices and alternate re-considerations of early childhood education.

Last year, artist Albert Potrony undertook a 12-week residency at the Portman as part of the programme in which he worked collaboratively with children, staff, parents and Serpentine to explore the potential of free play in the school system. Throughout the residency, Albert created a series of material-led play spaces featuring matter such as recycled tubes, plastic sheets, ropes and reflective plastics. During the sessions, children were encouraged to creatively explore the materials alongisde peers and adults through play. Before, during and after each session, the artist, Portman staff, parents and Gallery team engaged in critically reflective discussions that considered the relationships between the programme’s various components such as the materials, curriculum, people and pedagogical underpinnings. The ‘Play as Radical Practice’ toolkit is a direct product of these collaborative discussions.

The toolkit is comprised of three main parts: a booklet, a 24-piece card game (pictured below) and an accompanying film. These work together to share and further consider the imagery, questions and ideas generated from the residency. The toolkit also seeks to support early educators to form solidarities with the children they work with and to advocate for free play in the state school system. This is done through taking a individuals taking position as well as including thoughts and questions from multiple perspectives.

I really like the way the card game explores the residency’s emergent debates and ideas from multiple perspectives including children, parents, curators, the artist and centre staff. Each of the cards in the game features an image and provocation such as field notes, a quote and/or question. For example, one card combines an image of a child and staff member playing with the artist’s materials in the nursery. A quote from a Portman staff member is then presented alongside the image with four interconnected questions:

” ‘They are different children with different members of staff. It’s really interesting, when you read the school reports you think ‘I don’t see him like that at all.’ He may be really chatty with me and really quiet with someone else and also the children behave differently depending on who is present, which is that thing about stepping away from them and letting them play by themselves as part of that witnessing.’ Staff

What is witnessing? Who does it? What does it mean? Witnessing as assessment?  “

These work together to situate the emergence of the educator’s idea around the standardisation of learning within the specific context that it was produced. Furthermore, the card invites the reader, or ‘player’ of the card game, to extend, challenge or support the teacher’s experience through critically thinking about the questions themselves.

Each card is further divided into key themes such as space, relationships, standardisation and chaos/order. Each one of these themes prompts deeper consideration and re-considerations around the imagery, quotes and questions featured in the toolkit. The accompanying booklet investigates these themes more extensively alongside quotes from key early childhood and play theorists such as Hillevi Lenz-Taguchi, Tim Gill, Simon Nicholson and Arthur Battram. You may also come across the introduction I wrote for the toolkit in the booklet, lol. I do wish to point out that my role on the programme is insignificant in comparison to the amazing educators, curators, artists, children and parents who worked together on an ongoing basis to produce the complex conversations, thinking and practices throughout the residency.

The toolkit booklet can be downloaded from the Serpentine website here. A limited number of printed toolkits are available free of charge from the Serpentine learning team. For a copy, please email: jemmae@serpentinegalleries.org . The Play As Radical Practice film will be available to view on the Serpentine website in the near future. An interim report of Serpentine’s World Without Walls programme, including Changing Play, can also be downloaded from the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and Literacies website here: worldwithoutwalls_interimresearchreport_final-copy

Isamu Noguchi’s whimsicle playscapes at SFMOMA

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).

Isamu Noguchi’s design for the U.S Pavilion Expo from 1970. © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, NY. Image: sfmoma.org

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.

Noguchi’s ‘Play Mountain’ (1933). Cast 1977. Bronze. Image: noguchi.or

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.

Larrivee, S (2011). ‘Playscapes: Isamu Noguchi’s Designs for Play,’Public Art Dialogue, 1:01, pp. 53-80.

Noguchi, I (1967). A Sculptor’s World. Tokyo: Thomas and Hudson. pp.176-177.

Noguchi Playscapes (2017), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, July 15 – November 26, 2017.

SFMOMA website (2017). ‘Noguchi’s Playscapes,’ SFMOMA website. Viewed August 14, 2017.

 

Creativity, Multiculturalism & Pedagogical Flexibility: A Conversation with Atelierista Lorna Rose

We live in a world of great cultural, social and political diversity. Recent politically-motivated attacks have been one of many complex contributed towards increasing concern, fear and distrust between members of our community. Yet the central pillar of a democratic society lies in a nation’s ability to value the richness of diversity and to allow its citizens to express their beliefs and opinions through various means. Within an early years education setting, designing for flexibility allows children to encounter educational experiences from diverse levels of knowledge, backgrounds and interests. This then paves the way for the possibility of collaborative learning, understanding, respect and friendship between people.

This week I spent two days at the Lillian de Lissa Children’s Centre & Nursery in Birmingham (UK) working alongside their artist-in-residence, Lorna Rose. 90% of the children attending the nursery are from an ethnic minority, over half speak English as a second language and among the 90 children in attendance, 28 languages are spoken. The ultimate goal of the nursery is for the children to leave with a sense of curiosity about the world. Lorna has been working as the ‘atelierista’ (an artist who works in an education setting) at the centre for over 10 years. This post features an interview with Lorna in which she discusses her approach towards designing creative experiences for children – one that is built upon child-centred practice, flexibility and collaborative reflection.

Further Links

Bragg, S & Manchester, H 2011, Creativity, School Ethos and the Creative Partnerships Programme Final Report, The Open University , UK.

Lorna Rose website (2016), http://lornarose.co.uk, viewed March 16 2016.

Plant, S (2009). A Celebration: Creative Childhood Project 2009-2010. Lillian de Lissa and Belgravia Children’s Centre, Birmingham, UK.

Rose, L 2009, Strength in Diversity, EYE – Early Years Educator, Vo. 11 (1), pp. 36038.

Rose, L & Carlin, A 2011, ‘Turning pupils onto learning: Creative classrooms.’ In: Elkington, R (ed.) Action Creativity – Working with Boys. Routledge, Oxon. pp. 39-51.

Thomson, P & Rose, L 2010. ‘When only the visual will do.’ In: Thomson, P & Sefton-Green J (eds.) Researching Creative Learning: Methods and Issues. Routledge. Oxon.

Thomson, P & Rose, L 2011. ‘Creative Learning in an Inner-city Primary School (England).’ In: Wrigley, T; Thomson, P & Lingard, B. Changing Schools – Alternative ways to make a world of difference, Routledge, Oxon.

Vecci, V (2010). Art and Creativity in Reggio Emilia: Exploring the Role and Potential of Ateliers in Early Childhood Education, Routledge, London.

Interdisciplinary Work & Creative Innovation

I recently started a LinkedIn profile. It asked me to enter my job description. My brain then embarked on an existential journey of personal and professional identity. This post explores the joys and challenges of working in an interdisciplinary field and the potential it brings for creative innovation. 

Image credit: Alexei Jawlensky, Mysticher Kopf (Galka) 1917. Source: http://moeller-fine-art-ltd.art.1stdibs.com

I, like most professionals working in the arts, have come into my current role from a diverse background and non-linear career trajectory. On different days, or even different minutes of each day, I swap hats between the role of an artist, an educator, a curator, a researcher, a designer, a photographer, a project coordinator and other undefined titles. Sometimes these moments are an amalgamation of multiple identities, at other times I am the love child of them all. To further complicate things, my area of work is at the intersection of fine art, education, sociology, museum studies, critical social theory and architecture. When someone asks me what it is I do, my response is entirely dependent upon the dominant thoughts in my head at that particular moment. To add to it, gallery education is in a state of continuous definition and redefinition with diverse job titles such as children’s curator, education officer, learning coordinator, family program manager for positions encompassing similar responsibilities. It is also highly like that the professional roles which I will take on in the future have not been created yet as the industry grows and responds to changes in curatorial and contemporary art practice and market-driven demands. Consequently, the ability to define what exactly it is I do is problematic on most accounts.

The first few months of my PhD, during which I shifted from a practitioner to a full time researcher, were professionally disorientating. In my heart I have always identified primarily as an artist. In my late teens I discovered that the most accurate way in which I could explore and express the complexities of my soul was through photography. After an internship at ABC Kids I realised I had a second great love: education. But my love for education was not driven by the desire to be a classroom teacher. I have always been interested in how sites of informal learning such as museums, libraries, community centres and in particular art galleries can provide experiences to diversify children’s creative thinking pathways when offered in parallel to formal learning environments. So I studied a Masters in Museum Studies specialising in gallery education. I wrote my thesis on intergenerational learning in American art museums that consisted of data collection in the education departments at The Dallas Museum of Art, The Denver Art Museum, The Met, MoMA and The Smithsonian Early Enrichment Centre. Upon my return to Australia I worked as a researcher in the Children’s Art Centre at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art and an Exhibitions Assistant at Artslink before being moving into my position as a children’s curator at The Ipswich Art Gallery. In August 2015 I left my motherland and set sail for England to take up my PhD position at Tate. I tell this slightly indulgent story, as I would like to illustrate my diverse and what may appear to be ‘fickle’ background.

I have often felt like a Jack-of-all-trades and a Master of none. I don’t quite fit into the contemporary artist scene, I don’t fit within a traditional teaching setting, I am not a curator and I don’t quite have the expertise to call myself an academic. Merging these areas of work is often a very vulnerable place to be in. Some people get professionally territorial when traditional views are questioned and new connections are proposed. Finding your tribe is difficult, if not impossible, when you are in a continuous state of metamorphosis and redefinition. Developing an artistic and intellectual identity is also challenging when you are navigating new seas as a solo sailor. It requires relentless confidence and drive whilst still being open and flexible to new ideas and knowledge. The process of creating new connections between ideas and disciplines otherwise viewed in isolation can be perplexing, confusing and incredibly exhilarating.

Every gallery educator has an equally diverse story to tell. People enter this field of work with varying degrees of studies and a wide array of professional and personal experiences. To me, this is a major contributor as to why the field is so interesting and dynamic. Under successful management, interdisciplinary teams are a recipe for radical creative innovation. The challenge is for organisations to construct systems that foster individual’s strengths and take advantage of the heterogeneity of diversity.

In her TED talk , Linda Hill, Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, explored the qualities of successful leaders and how they champion collective creativity in the workplace. Over numerous case studies, Hill’s research found that what many directors believe are the qualities of good leadership does not work when it comes to creating innovation. She argues that in order to create environments which foster innovation, leaders need to embrace the role of a ‘social architect’ in which individuals are willing and able to share their talents, skills and interests with others. The role of the leader is then to bring these ideas together and not let the situation degenerate into chaos. This moves away from an outdated idea of a leader in which an individual’s role is to create a vision and the inspire others to act it out. Managers must create systems in which individuals can unleash their talents and passions whilst being able to bring these ideas together in an anti-hierarchical way that is useful. Creative innovation then becomes a process that arises when new connections and relations are made between ideas and people. Innovation is born from bottom-up hierarchical models in which discovery-based learning, experimentation, social interaction and anti-hierarchical models lead to an increase in the speed of new ideas being generated.

Whilst research has demonstrated that diversity in team can also lead to misunderstanding, suspicion and tension in the workplace. Hill argues that such conflict should be understood as an important aspect in progression. Individual differences should be amplified and brought into heated discussions with other team members through which individuals advocate for their perspective whilst listening and discussing the ideas of others. The ability to celebrate diversity and differences in the workplace requires a fundamental reconsideration of corporate and project management. It demands a willingness from directors and senior managers to let go of a certain level of control and let’s be honest, many are not prepared to do this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Palle Nielsen, The Model & Play as Social Activism

In 1968 the Moderna Museet, Stockholm and artist Palle Nielsen staged The Model, a radical social experiment involving 20,000 children, an indoor playground and no rules. Within the ‘exhibition’ the act of children playing was used as an instrument for social and political activism. This post features a study of The Model and Nielsen’s work as an artist, educator and social activist.

Palle Nielson (1968) The Model. Image credit: http://th3.fr

In 1968 Danish artist Palle Nielsen exhibited a giant adventure playground in the main gallery of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. The Model – A Model for A Qualitative Society was a free play zone in which children could jump off bridges into a foam pit, swing from tyres, make things out of DIY tools such as hammers and saws, climb rope swings, paint, wear dress-ups and use turntables to mix music being played on loudspeakers. From September 30 – October 20 1968, the exhibition saw 35,000 visitors with 20,000 of them being children. The artist intended to reject an elitist concept of art and art museum through the ‘creation of a collectivist human being.’ 

Palle Nielsen (1968). The Model. Image credit: http://th3.fr

“I wanted to deconstruct ‘the white cube’ as the idea of an art museum… The idea of an art museum was to be changed by the live presence of active, playing children in the museum.”

The exhibition was free to all visitors under the age of 18. Kindergartens and school groups from all over Stockholm were invited to visit the exhibition in a grand attempt to integrate new members of the community into the gallery space. The Model sat between a pedagogical project, a process- driven art installation and political protest against the art gallery as a space for the social elite.

Prior to creating The Model, Nielsen had been building unauthorised adventure playgrounds in disadvantaged areas of Copenhagen. A practice which he saw as the mobilisation of children as agents of democratic activism through play. After a period of fundraising and negotiations with the Director of the Modern Museet, Nielsen constructed The Model with the assistance of children and anti-Vietnam War activists.

Scandinavia in the 1960’s and 70’s saw the rise of a progressive child-centered education movement that dismissed the idea of children as passive beings in the community. Whilst the movement had strong roots in left-wing politics, the intention of the education reform was not radical social transformation but to create a new social framework that valued children as active beings and creators of their own lives. At its core, Nielsen had created a space which unleashed the anarchic act of creative play as a tool for the activation of children’s right to freedom of expression. However unlike the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the time, The Model empowered children though its ability to connect individuals with themselves, their environment and others in the community. The exhibition statement read:

Pelle Nielsen (1968), The Model. Image credit: http://www.kunstkritikk.no

‘The idea is to create a framework for children’s own creative play. Children of all ages will work on developing this framework. Indoors and outdoors – in all kinds of play – they should have the right to communicate their capacity for self-expression. Their play is the exhibition. The exhibition is the work of children. There is no exhibition. It is only an exhibition because the children are playing in an art museum. It is only an exhibition for those who are not playing. That’s why we call it a model. Perhaps it will be the model for the society children want. Perhaps children can tell us so much about their own world that this can also be a model for us. We hope so. Therefore, we are letting the children present their model to those who are working with or are responsible for the environment provided for children outside – in the adult world. We believe children are capable of articulating their own needs. And that they want something different from what awaits them.’

Following The Model Nielsen was shunted from the Danish art academy where he was completing his PhD in architecture. After continuous criticism from critics and increasing isolation from the art world he left the academy to become a teacher in adult and community education centers in Denmark. In 1998 he was contacted by art critic Lars Bang Larsen who was writing a paper on The Model for an art journal. In a wave of resurgent interest in his art practice, Nielsen agreed to donate the documentation of the project to Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. The documentation was exhibited at MACBA (2010) and Tate Liverpool (2014). A replica of The Model was presented at the ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark from February 9 – December 7, 2014.

Pelle Nielsen (1968). The Model. Image credit: http://www.macba.cat