This post discusses the possibilities of artworks in facilitating learning and alternate ways of imagining the world. I draw upon the work of Maxine Greene and John Dewey to explore the proposition that children’slearning through artworks has the potential to challenge dominant discourses, opening up new ways of thinking and being. There is also a resource list for educators and parents interested in incorporating artworks into children’s learning.
“It is not that the artist offers solutions or gives directions. He nudges; he renders us uneasy; he makes us (if we are lucky) see what we would not have seen without him. He moves us to imagine, to look beyond” Maxine Greene (2000, p. 276).
Artworks can be used in many ways for many different reasons in learning contexts. They offer rich possibilities for experiencing and imagining the world from new and multiple perspectives. Visual art as well as the arts more generally, have the ability to make people aware of different ways of thinking and being in the world, working against reductionist and singular ways of thinking.
Maxine Greene (2000) extends upon the word of John Dewey (1916, 1934, 1954) to argue that imagination and the arts play a critical role in the making of democratic communities. She suggests that school curriculum should aim to prioritise the ‘releasing of the imagination’ through providing rich aesthetic experiences for children. These then provide new modalities for children to sense, experience and learn through the world.
However, the mere presence of artworks in a learning environment does not guarantee that a child is encountering or imagining the world in new ways. Greene argues that if school curriculum is to support imagination through the arts, children’s encounters need to be aesthetically varied, rich and reflective. Through this, learning through artworks has the potential to challenge dominant discourses and ways of thinking. This may then encourage children to question their understandings and assumptions about the world, to think critically about what is and what could be.
Below is a list of resources for educators and parents who may be interested in incorporating artworks in children’s learning at home or in the classroom.
Resource list
Many of the major modern and contemporary art museums have online digital archives for their collections. Here are some links to my favorites:
The Museum of Modern Art has made 77,000 works from 25,000 different artists available online. The search engine is easy to use and you can refine your hits using different classifications and time periods.
Tate also have an extensive online collection featuring artworks, exhibitions, videos and artist journals. The digital archive is well referenced and has many tags that are great for getting lost in amazing artwork worm-holes. The search engine is easy to use and has lots of search filter options. Tate’s most famous artworks feature extensive summaries, a copy of the artwork’s display caption as well as the techniques used to produce the artwork, for example Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ page.
TateShots and TateTalks– Tate have also put together two quite an exceptional collection of video and audio recordings. TateTalks features video footage of talks and events held at the art museum. TateShots comprises of artist interviews, performance pieces (I highly recommend watching Earle Brown’s ‘Calder Piece‘), exhibition films and artist studio visits. If I had a dollar for every minute I spent watching TateShots I would be a millionaire. But I work in children’s education and the arts so maybe I shouldn’t put a monetary value on the amount of time I procrastinate.
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark has a constantly growing online collection of videos from different fields such as art, architecture, music, literature and design. I love the Louisiana Channel as it features a lot of Scandinavian and European contemporary artists who I have only discovered through watching these clips.
The art auction houses of Southeby’sand Christie’sboth have YouTube channels featuring short video clips of artist interviews, studio visits and world auction records.
Online courses
MoMA has developed three online courses that explore inquiry-led learning through artworks. Admittedly I have not had a chance to do any of these courses but I think it worth a look. The first, ‘Art & Ideas: Teaching with Themes’ uses theme-based teaching practices to support educators in incorporating modern and contemporary artworks into curriculum. Then there is Art & Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies For Your Classroom looks at museum education strategies for inquiry-based teaching and how these can be used in classrooms. Finally, Art & Activity: Interactive Strategies for Engaging with Art builds on content from courses one and two to explore activity-based strategies for using artworks primary and secondary lesson plans.
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 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 CummingsImage: 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.
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
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 explores the work of Italian artist, Bruno Munari (1907-1998). Munari was a self-proclaimed ‘inventor artist writer designer architect illustrator player-with-children’ (The Independent, 1998) whose creative practice intertwined with the educational philosophies of Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori.
“It hasn’t always been easy for me to make people take me seriously. I play with children. And, in a society such as ours, anyone who plays or works with children runs the risk of being thought eccentric.”Munari
“Understanding what art is, is a (useless) concern of the adult. Understanding how you do it instead, is a genuine interest in the child.” Munari
Bruno Munari was a man whose work could never be defined. He created and invented prolifically across mediums and methods diverse as paper, painting, sculpture, toys, photography, film, education, fine art and graphic design. The quirky objects, furniture, books, pictures and workshops he created encouraged learning through tactile, physical and kinaesthetic play. Whilst Munari’s work is often associated with the Italian Futurist movement of the 1920’s, he also drew heavily from Surrealism’s vibrant pallets and the Bauhaus’ geometric forms. Munari’s uncontrolable inventiveness led him to create outlandish bodies of work including an entire series of useless machines and an equally brilliant succession of ‘useless’ unreadable books.
Munari encouraged children to learn about the world through touching and playing with materials and things. Possibly one of his most well-known interventions was his Tactile Workshop series. In these Murani in worked with groups of young children to experiment with touch as an exploration of material’s properties and artistic concepts. Documentation of these workshops can be found in his appropriately named publication, The Tactile Workshops.
Below is a selection of Munari’s experiments run with children. These clips are in Italian but are quite straight forward even with a limited understanding of the language… and are visually rich and interesting to watch. Divertiti!
Further links
MunArt A website (official or unofficial, I am unsure!) dedicated to the work of Bruno Munari
MEF Museo Ettore Fico’s ‘Bruno Munari; Total Artist’ exhibition website. The exhibition was presented from February 16 – June 11, 2017. Scroll down the webpage to view installation images from the show.
This post discusses collective creativity, its interconnection with imagination and the potential both of these offer in relation to a pursuit towards empathy and understanding.
These concepts are not new. Maxine Greene, John Dewey and Elliot Eisner have all discussed them extensively. In this post I will focus upon an article written by the late social constructivist Lev Vygotsky titled ‘Imagination and Creativity in Childhood’ [1]. It is the first of four articles he wrote on imagination and creativity – a topic that he is rarely associated with. In the paper Vygotsky discusses the definition, complexity and origins of creativity and what this can teach us about ourselves and others. I have selected the article as it presents many interesting suggestions on creative imagination and offers a reflective viewpoint for how it could be applied to my own research. These concepts are complex with many nuances, debates and tangents that can be built on. My intention is to introduce and define some key concepts that will then be elaborated upon in future posts.
A Definition of Creativity
According to Vygotsky creativity encompasses ‘any human act that gives rise to something new… regardless of whether what is created is a physical object or some mental or emotional construct that lives within the person who created it and is known only to him [2].’ Drawing upon this definition, creativity is present both when major scientific discoveries and famous artworks are made and also ‘whenever a person imagines, combines, alters and creates something new, no matter how small a drop in the bucket this new thing appears compared to the works of geniuses [3].’ He elaborates on this as follows:
‘…imagination is the basis of any creative activity and is equally part of all cultural life, including artistic, scientific , and technical creativity. In this sense all that is the work of the human hand, the whole world of culture, is distinguished from the natural world because it is a product of human imagination and creativity based on imagination [4].’
Imagination is a tool used to construct new combinations that developed into an artwork, invention or scientific discovery. If we have this understanding of creativity, it is can be concluded that creativity is already fully developed in very young children. Creativity and imagination are also interdependent as imagination allows for the ability to recombine elements to produce creative acts. At the same time, the expression of these creative acts, for example a song or artwork or piece of literature, opens the possibility for an individual to imagine alternate realities of other people.
Collective Creativity
Creativity is frequently inaccuratly perceived as a gift of an elite few artists, architects, musicians and designers who individually produce artworks, operas and buildings which all non-creative people merely act as consumers of. Drawing on this notion, it is easy to associate creativity with famous artists and designers such as Georgia O’Keefe, Louise Bourgeois or Zaha Hadid. However this perception is also untrue. Applying Vygotsky’s definition, creativity exists when an individual recombines, transforms or merges preexisting elements, feelings and ideas to create a new expressive combination. This allows it to live deeply in the everyday lives of all people.
Extending upon this definition, collective creativity can be recognised as an understanding that the construction of any major artwork or invention, no matter how small or large, is the result of the shared labor of other people’s work and discoveries throughout history. Vygotsky articulates this as follows:
‘When we consider the phenomenon of collective creativity, which combines all these drops of individual creativity that frequently are insignificant in themselves, we readily understand what an enormous percentage of what has been created by humanity is a product of the anonymous collective creative work of unknown inventors [5].’
For example, take Gordon Bennett’s Triptych (1989) pictured below. The artist has drawn on a combination of pre-existing concepts and techniques such as the use of oil in canvas, the image of ‘Truganini’ Tasmania’s last Aborigine, Western art’s tradition of triptych panel painting, imagery of the vast Australian dessert, the inclusion of Renaissance symbols, spatial arrangement, perspectives and grids. Bennett has combined these factors, in addition to more that I have not identified, with his personal experience, feelings and emotions of growing up in Australia with both Indigenous and Scottish/English ancestry. The expression of the complex and unique recombination of these elements has been presented in the form of an oil painting. Whilst the final product may initially appear to have been done in isolation, according to Vygotsky it is actually the result of a collective, cumulative, transformative and interconnected process.
Gordon Bennett (1989). Triptych: Requiem, Of grandeur, Empire. Oil and photography on canvas. Collection: Queensland Art Gallery.
A second example of collective creativity can be seen in the Atelier van Licht, the Dutch children’s art/science creative laboratory. It is evident within both the creative development of the Atelier and in the qualities of space. The Atelier has and continues to be creativity developed by an interdisciplinary team consisting of an education specialist, a physicist, an industrial designer and an artist. It is therefore an excellent example of how individual’s collective creativity can be expanded and enhanced when utilised as part of a collaborative team environment (also see Linda Hill’s awesome TED Talk on collective creativity within corporate environments). Each member of the team brings their unique expertise, experience and creativity to the construction of projects, allowing for diverse and innovative creative ideas to be explored. The environment also draws upon discoveries made in early childhood education, physics (for example the reflection, refraction and absorption of light on different surfaces) as well as the development of similar projects such as Reggio Emilia’s ‘Ray of Light’ and the Exploratorium’s ‘Light Play’. The Atelier simultaneously exists as its own unique construction and site of collaborative knowledge building. Combined, the collective and collaborative nature of creativity within the space raises complex questions around authorship as it is impossible to credit the development and what is produced within the space to a sole individual.
Atelier van Licht at Stedelijk Museum 2013, Amsterdam. Image credit: Atelier van Licht
Creativity: Meaning, Freedom & Imagination
Vygotsky believed that the origin of creative imagination lies in children’s play. Play is not simply an infantile act where experiences are reproduced but a deeply creative one that brings together different experiences to reconstruct, appropriate and transform them to create new realities. A clear distinction is made between reproductive imagination, where an individual reproduces behaviour and ideas from previous experiences and combinatory imagination where an individual reproduces previous experiences in combination with new elements, feelings and thoughts. Both of these definitions of imagination can be linked to Vygotsky’s well-known concepts of scaffolding, social constructivism and the zone of proximal development. I will discuss this further in another post.
Like Dewey, Vygotsky advocated for the belief that a child’s creativity is directly connected to their lived and imagined experience and the feelings and emotions associated with this. Experiencing art contains a strong internal, as opposed to external, truth. This is due to the connection the arts make with an individual’s internal world of emotions, feelings, concepts and thoughts. It is this internal logic that allow artworks to have an effect on individuals. The principles of personal meaning and freedom are key within this connection. Vygotsky believed that children cannot be forced to partake in creative activities; doing so must arise out of their own interests. Doing so allows for an individual to apply their creativity to a topic that is intrinsically meaningful to their emotions and encourages them to express the complexities of their ideas, feelings and ideas through creative acts.
Creativity is therefore an incredibly complex process dependent upon the diversity and richness of one’s experience. Such experience becomes the fuel that drives fantasy, imagination and therefore creative acts. Thus ‘the richer the experience, the richer the act of imagination’ [6]. We must broaden the experiences provided to children as the more they hear, taste, feel and experience, the more experience they accumulate and the more fuel they have to drive their creative capacity. The greater their creative thinking process, the stronger their ability is to solve unexpected problems in a world that is rapidly changing.
Imagination takes on a crucial role in human development by means of expanding a person’s understanding of the world through the ability to envision what they have not directly experienced themselves and conceptualise an idea or reality from alternative and multiple perspectives. This allows the possibility for an individual to connect and empathise with realities that they never knew existed. Bakhtin termed this realisation ‘heteroglossia’ [7] where a collective group of people become aware of the diversity and value of diverse perspectives in discourse.
Maxine Greene wrote extensively on the topic of social imagination, a term she defined as ‘the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, in our schools’ [8]. In her books The Dialectic of Freedom and Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts and Social Change she explores the possibilities of how encounters with the arts can be used as a vessel for disintegrating misconceptions and judgments between people through imagining unfamiliar feelings and realities of others. Within this, the arts or artists do not necessarily provide solutions to the challenges of multiculturalism. Rather, as Greene articulates, ‘he nudges, he renders us uneasy, he makes us (if we are lucky) see what we would not have seen without him. He moves us to imagine, to look beyond [9].’ An individual’s ability to develop their imaginative capacity requires them to be more than a passive onlooker of art -they need to be willing to critically engage, reflect and imagine with the arts. Such critical engagement is enhanced by social interaction with others where concepts, ideas and beliefs can be explored, expressed and integrated into new collective forms through the creative process. To be continued!
“People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others [1].”
In 1973, Ivan Illich, a Catholic priest and Professor at Penn State University published his epilogue to the modern industrial age. Tools for Convivialitystood as an ode to a need for multiplicity in modes of knowledge production in order to connect individuals with themselves and others in the community. Illich’s argument is built on the premise that the advancement in mass industrial and mechanical production has removed people’s free use of their natural abilities, coming at the expense of human’s connection with themselves and others in the community. Industrial forms of production and education have led to isolation, social polarization and the deterioration of the fabric of community.
Tools for Conviviality came two years after the release of Deschooling Society, Illich’s critique of institutionalised education and his belief of its connection to the institutionalisation of society. Illich is often categorised as a social critic yet this restricts the multidisciplinary nature of his work, which deeply intertwines educational, medical, technological, scientific, social and cultural theory.
Illich’s constructs his definition of conviviality in opposition to industrial production controlled by others:
“conviviality is the autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value [2].”
He connects this with the notion of ‘tools,’ which are broadly defined not just to include handtools such as hammers, brooms and saws but also extends his interpretation to institutions and systems of production that create intangible commodities such as education and healthcare. Convivial tools permit people to learn in different ways and personalise their lives in response to their own interests and natural abilities, granting people the ability to build the skills needed to connect and synthesise information into original and personalised forms. This then allows for individualised, participatory and meaningful experiences which allow people to work at their own pace and level of understanding, moving away from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Convivial tools grant man the ability to express meaning through action.
Illicit does not dismiss all necessity for industrial production but rather advocates for a balance in the relationship between what people need to do by themselves and what industry can do for them. When this equilibrium is lost and industrial production takes over, the over-programming of man deadens his creative imagination. A complex balance is therefore needed between industrial growth and alternate individual modes of knowledge production.
“…to the degree that a man masters his tools, he can invest the world with his meaning , to the degree that he is mastered by his tools, the shape of the tool determines his own self-image [3].”
Illich constructs an evaluative framework to analyse the complex theories and ideologies driving the industrial crisis. In this he points to the need for a common language amongst people which can be used to critically discuss the situation from multiple perspectives. Unlike Marx, Illich does not construct his solution on the design of a utopian society. Alternatively he formulates a methodological approach in a series of steps embedded in our current society which allows for the critical reflection. Within this, he emphasises the need for a shift in perception and language people use towards ‘manipulative’ industrial tools in which they take ownership of their tools and recognise their role as active agents in their lives. For example, instead of the education and healthcare system dictating them and how the connect with others, people need to recognise their control over ‘their education,’ ‘their health’ and ‘their transportation.’ Through this, the controlling and standardised nature of industrial production is broken through individual’s defending their own right and need for conviviality and personalised modes of knowledge production within their own lives. Tools for Conviviality exemplifies the necessity of constructing convivial environments within our community. When curating spaces for children in art galleries, it raises the question as to how we can design for a balance of individual creative knowledge production alongside the transmission of existent cultural knowledge and values.
References
Illich, I. (1973), Tools for Conviviality, Harper & Row,p.6.
“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.
Art. Play. Children. Pedagogy. 