Should we let experience just happen?

This blog entry I am going to try and answer my questions from the previous blog entry, I will do this by sharing some insightful dialogue from my time in Reggio, and of course my own conclusions.

• Should we let experience just happen and acknowledge that the uncertainty is in fact the start of a focus?

Mirella Ruozzi intrigued me with her insightful thoughts on the play of very young children, she spoke of children and tradition.
 " very young children like to break with tradition, and it is very easy for very small children to feel displaced.
It is the whole entire object that they will encounter with, and very small children speak with there eyes.
They speak with desires.
There is an enormous effort to concentrate and use one word to communicate, so they impose a different way of seeing than adults."
Mirella Ruozzi
In depth study week
The experience of the infant and toddlers centres and its context October 2010

So in my own words, I came to the conclusion that it was time for me to practise more patience in my own practises with children in the art curriculum and to move away from pre disposed thoughts as children were exploring.
Then I discovered that to change my practise I had to really listen and follow children's lead, and to be very active in sitting back.

• Can we get to asbstract thinking without abstract actions that involve really breaking down and knowing our art mediums?

From my own experience my answer would be no we can't, the practise of more insightful watching really improved my relationships with children that came to the art area, and as a result I heard there voices a whole lot more, and my own voice less and less.

I learnt that some children wanted a deep experience and others were just picking up an interest and they were trying things out quickly.

There was not a whole lot more art mediums that were added to the art area but the ways in which we applied them and the subject we had to apply them to completely changed, and it goes back to what Mirella was saying about children and tradition, allowing children to bring there own ideas to make new traditions, because if it is in their head and is their idea then the participation grows.

Children showed that there own processes of abstract actions lead to a certain motif, and if encouraged to work through their motif, continued to add more dimensions to art and the intensity of art grew.

My first experiences with the science of thought behind Reggio Emilia

In 2010 i was the very lucky recipient of the R E Provocations scholarship In Depth Study Week,
The Experience of the Infant Toddler Centres and its Context.

I spent a week in Reggio attending the Centro Internazionale Loris Malaguzzi, and since I'm in the process of packing up for yet another move, i thought id share my notes with you.

Half of them might not make sense to anyone, but part of the scholarship was to theorise and construct a few questions to research while i was there, so that's what i did, and it totally changed my practise.

It was not so much what i saw in the centres and the practise of the teachers but more the way the teachers thought.

This is my list i developed after attending the R E Provocations conference in NZ back in 2010 before i went to Reggio Emilia.

• Should we let experience just happen and acknowledge that the uncertainty and experimental is in fact  the start of a focus?

• Can we get to abstract thinking without abstract actions that involve really breaking down and knowing our art mediums?

• Are we too quick to Jump in and take control?

• Does the change that happens as we play with creations slip away unnoticed? So are we missing the hypothesis?

• Process verses the technique, could the process be the product?

I think those where the questions that won the judging panel over. 

Well that's my blog for today, because each question is a blog entry in itself.

I will try and find some more photos of Reggio Emilia though, who doesn't love photos :)

Very beautiful spaces

 The window displays in Reggio were all a work of art

Bicycles everywhere

MMMM Formaggio

Scarpe

Peekaboo greenery

The Reggio Lions

In the beginning

"When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes inventive,searching,daring,self expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs,upsets,enlightens,and opens ways for understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible"
Robert Henri
The art spirit, 1923

The dipositions Aniela is showing in these photos are her ability to tinker around and her definite knack of deconstructing and constructing.

I also wanted to show that creativity is not all about the resourses, creativity can happen anywhere anytime with what ever you have and no one knows this better than the young child.
There are so many experiences that nurture creativity, so i have added a few from the last 6 months that really capture my daughters spirit of creativity.

 I have met a few people that have openly admitted that they have struggled to teach children art skills, perhaps because they have not nurtured their own artistic nature, there was a point in history when just the simple pleasure of having a coloured ribbon was a great treasure, and it can be the same for the young child discovering the beauty of colour, texture and movement, so that is why it is important to take our time with art, and understand that art and creativity can be everywhere.