The Family’s Experience

Towards the end of our playschool year 2023 we had the pleasure of welcoming welcoming Kids’ Own associate artists Maree Hensey and Naomi Draper into our playspace, as our playschool took part in the Arts in Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) Pilot. Embarking on a journey of creativity and learning together, we put the child’s experience at the centre.

We have a natural diversity of families and family backgrounds represented at playschool and we place a high value on the richness of the different cultural backgrounds that are represented within the group, both adults and children – we are a community made up of many different parts.

When we introduced the idea of visiting artists to the families there was a general sense of interest and curiosity with parents making comments such as “What is going to be expected of my child…How will they interact with my child…I don’t like art, I was never any good at school…Will my child’s ability be judged…What type of art will be involved?”.

Some parents are artists themselves and were naturally excited and impressed by the idea. One hundred percent of families gave their consent for their child to take part in the art project.

It soon became evident that a great number of parents had fixed ideas about what both ‘Art’ and ‘Artists’ were and some parents talked about their expectations e.g. “It will be lots of colouring…There will be careful painting”.

As the weeks rolled by and the project unfolded I am sure that comments from children at home added detail to parents’ interpretation of what was happening with the artists at playschool.

One of the favourite links between families and playschool was the gallery which we opened after one session, where parents were invited to view and experience the group’s work. This presented a wonderful opportunity for parents to interact with the artists and to get to know them, as well as to appreciate the work the children were doing.

We have very strong, positive bonds with the families who use our service, we value parental input and encourage open communication between parents and the service providers.

The arts project was very much a shared experience where a recognition and value was placed upon the contribution made by families towards the overall development of the child both within and outside of the setting. The introduction of the community artists into our space strengthened the link between our service provision and the local community – the project formed a conduit for interaction and involvement.

The Adult’s Experience

Towards the end of our playschool year 2023 we had the pleasure of welcoming Kids’ Own associate artists Maree Hensey and Naomi Draper into our playspace, as our playschool took part in the Arts in Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) Pilot. Embarking on a journey of creativity and learning together, we put the child’s experience at the centre.

Placing the child at the centre of practice requires a greater investment of energy from the adult. It is usually more stressful and certainly appears more chaotic and messy than putting the adult’s needs at the centre of practice.

In our space we try always to put the experience of the child at the centre of all we do – empowering for the child, exhausting for the adult! One of the many benefits of adopting a truly child-centred approach means that by the end of the year the group is very well defined, usually extremely confident, inclusive and cohesive with members confident, and comfortable within their own role and expectations. This can be beneficial when introducing new adults into the setting, allowing for the swift development of trust and rapport.

Strong leadership is important in ensuring that staff feel supported and secure in their role when new adults are introduced, especially staff are being asked to step away from their comfort zone into unfamiliar and unknown areas: e.g. “I’m rubbish at art…..I don’t know anything about art”. Thoughtful use of supportive, inclusive, non-threatening language can enhance and promote a feeling of mutual respect and encouragement, protecting positive outcomes for all of the adults involved.

We observed how the adults in the setting, both staff and artists, developed positive, supportive links, sharing the experience and learning that emerged through reflective practice: e.g. “I’ve noticed how ______ really loves working with charcoal….We should bring that resource into the playspace more often…..I really enjoyed working with the flowers, twigs, moss that we collected on the nature lane, I never thought of using them in that way before”.

Reflective practice should be a cornerstone of practice in the Early Years and is the hallmark of a high quality service – embracing new ways of doing things, seeking out and welcoming new challenges and reflecting upon this process empowers staff and encourages creative and innovative thinking.

The adult’s experience enhances the child’s experience.

Inviting the artists into our space elevated our practice and energised our thought processes, supporting our continued professional development.

The Children at the Centre

Towards the end of our playschool year in 2023 we had the pleasure of welcoming Kids’ Own associate artists Maree Hensey and Naomi Draper into our playspace, as our playschool took part in the Arts in Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) Pilot. Embarking on a journey of creativity and learning together, we put the child’s experience at the centre.

By placing the experience for the child at the centre it, the experience, becomes relevant and meaningful for the child – they are empowered and the process better reflects the individual need of each child. For example, a more confident and socially independent child will prioritise their learning through identifying and initiating contact with the newcomers. She will explore what they have to offer, what their contribution is going to be and how she can use this to further her own learning. She will embrace the new experience, quickly and enthusiastically seeking out learning e.g. “What’s your name?….What’s in your basket?….Can I have a go?….I need that” etc. etc.

A more reserved child, on the other hand, may prefer to spend his time in an observational role, building up learning through spectating, watching others, as they develop relationships and build trust. Once this phase is completed he is ready to take a more active role within the group once they become certain of expectation, roles and the new dynamics which are emerging.

Children experience art and the creative process differently to adults. Mostly children are creative in nature, possessing abundant curiosity and motivation to explore, experiment and create. Children do this all of the time through constructive play, arts and craft, mark making, dramatic role-play, musical play and physical play. It is, in fact, impossible to stop children from creating – it is how they learn.

The introduction of the artists directed the children’s learning and we observed how the child’s experience was enhanced through the patient, child-centred and facilitative approach adopted and employed by the artists.

It’s all in the planning.

We are all starting to wind down for Christmas so it’s a good time to start thinking about any future TAP+ or Blast projects that may be on the horizon in the New Year. Maybe reach out to any partners that you may be working with in January or February, have a coffee or arrange a Zoom meeting for an initial meet and greet. It’ll just be great to have touched base before signing off this term.

How do you do your actual planning? Do you record on an app? Do you take notes old school in a diary? I do a combo of both. I use the Goodnotes app on my iPad and a bullet journal. For the bullet journal, I like to use a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook. I divide every double spread into a week and keep a double spread spare for listing monthly activities. I love how it’s flexible, I can draw or use pages at the back for longer notes. For detailed notes, I use my Goodnotes app. I highly recommend it if you have an iPad. You can hand write notes or type, record audio from lectures and you can insert images. When I’m working in a school, I would take photos then insert them into the notes to remind me of what happened that day. I use the 2 systems to keep me on track.

Maybe ask Santy for some new notebooks? Or an iPad if he’s very generous!

I recently worked in a secondary school, Colaiste Mhuire in Ballymote on a BLAST Residency. Both Oona McGrath and I spent a lot of time planning to maximise my time with the students and it really paid off. We decided to do a two day intensive session with the students. We had a coffee in August and then had a studio visit. Oona discussed what she wanted to get out of the residency, she really thought about what her students needed so that was brilliant. Once we figured out what we were going to do, we were able to make a detailed materials list. I recorded this in my bullet journal and then screen shot it into my Goodnotes app to have a permanent record of it. Everything from what print paper to how we were going to protect the tables in the art room. It was very specific and it really worked. We checked in with each other coming closer to November and then it was smooth sailing when I turned up into the class as everything was perfect. I had visited the room beforehand and we had planned how the room needed to be rearranged before we started. It just made everything so much easier to work on the day, everything was in place and the focus was on the students as it should be.

Have a peaceful, restful time on your break and a Happy New Year.

Self-care and Textiles

I realise that the work I’ve done so far with Arts in Education has not touched on the curriculum. So far in my experience, teachers are using the projects as some time out for students to relieve anxiety post Covid both in primary and secondary schools. I suppose this is reflective of what we are, what we all need as a society post-Covid.

Working on the TAP+ project with Our Lady of Mercy Primary School in Sligo with Niamh Middleton is such an example. Niamh had identified 11 students from first class up to sixth class who were struggling for one reason or another. There were children suffering from high levels of anxiety, trauma, poverty and we wanted to give these children something special, some time out and they were just so thrilled to have been chosen.

There were different needs and abilities in the group, and the children didn’t know each other at the start as it’s such a large school. We decided on a rough plan of doing taster sessions every week but we were letting them lead on what they liked doing best. Firstly we did tetra pak printmaking and it turns out their favourite bit was rolling the ink. If I had left the glass pallet there for two weeks and the children could’ve kept rolling the ink they would’ve been so happy! I love that you CANNOT predict what the children will gravitate towards. They were not that bothered about the actual printing and we didn’t push them, it was all about what was making them happy in the moment. They just loved mixing the colours and it was the lovely sticky sound it makes which I can appreciate!

One of the weeks we decided we would try pom pom making and the children absolutely LOVED it. They were helping each other out, making multi-coloured ones and giant ones. Niamh thought it would be great to spread the pom pom love throughout the school. I had talked about guerilla crocheting and how I had yarn bombed a tree in Sligo with 400 pom-poms and they were very interested in this. We picked a tree in the schoolyard that was looking a bit sad so we could decorate it with pom poms. We decided it would be great for the students to go back into their respective classrooms with me and share with their classmates what they had learnt and how to make pom-poms so that every child in the school could then contribute to this pom-pom tree.

In my own practice post-Covid, I have returned to textiles as a self-care tool and I make my own clothes, knit, crochet, and quilt. It’s so useful when I’m trying to work out a painting, I take a break, do a seam or knit a row. You are still thinking about the work but there’s something about having textiles in your hand that eases and clarifies things. It is a mindful activity, you can’t be scrolling or thinking about 1 million other things. So I can see why the children responded to it, the tactile quality, the bright colours. What’s not to like?

Threading needles with Youthreach

This year, I was hired to do a project with Youthreach and MSLETB in Sewing and Sustainability in Sligo, Carrick on Shannon and Mohill. It was also designed as a few hours in the week to help ease anxiety in students post Covid. The students were studying catering, hairdressing, computers or LCA in the various centres.

We started off the six week project with the basics of the sewing machine, learning how to thread a machine and how to fix it if it stops working. We went on to cut out a basic pattern for a gender neutral top in curtain lining or fabric the students had at home. The students worked in groups of two and threes at a machine so everyone got a go. Some struggled with going from a 2 dimensional flat piece to a 3 dimensional garment but eventually got it when they saw the finished article. I love sharing my passion for me made clothes and by making your own clothes, you can make garments to fit every body shape.

I found a few challenges as the artist working in this context. There are new students starting not every week, but frequently and absenteeism is common so it became normal to have students at different levels at the project, which is tricky when you are trying to build on skills every week and to keep having to start again at the beginning.

I sometimes forget that a lot of young people are not used to working with their hands and it can take a while for students to get that hand eye coordination going. Basic instruction like threading a needle can be very frustrating for students in the beginning but when they persevere with it, they find it really rewarding and I know from the tutors when they walked into the room they couldn’t believe how quiet the class was, the students were completely engrossed in the task, it’s an extremely mindful pastime.

In the first of a new guest blog series, artist Lorna Watkins talks about her thoughts and experiences on her TAP placement.

New Beginnings

Being an artist of any kind can be a lonely existence. I love my alone time, it’s necessary to do the work but other human exchange is needed from time to time. I need that human energy to feed into my work and to me. I had worked with adults on painting workshops before but had never really considered working with young people.

My studio work is cyclical, I tend to make more work during the winter than the summer as I’m a Mammy too, with kids off school it’s harder to to get to the studio every day.

In comes an email from Sligo Education Centre and I clicked on it. I don’t even remember signing up for it. They were offering the TAP+ CPD training. Truthfully I didn’t really know a whole lot about it but it sounded interesting. It turned out to be a week long of blissful discussion with other artists, theatre practitioners, composers and designers amongst passionate educators.

The exercises that we did during the course were fun, inventive, thought provoking and playful. As an artist once you complete the course you are given a TAP+ Residency with a Primary School. That year I got a TAP+ placement in the Our Lady of Mercy Primary School, Sligo paired with tutor Niamh Middleton. It was a wonderful experience and has energised my practice. As a result I have since worked on four BLAST projects, worked on several Youthreach projects and with the SMILY LGBTI group. All because I left myself open to the “what if?”

So artists out there. If you’ve ever wondered about Arts in Education, please go to your local Education Centre and enquire about the TAP+ CPD Summer Course.

It can change everything!

Our Voices

During 2023 I took part in the Keystone art project. Once a week, Mitch and James, two successful artists, came to our school for a discussion, which later became activities and progress on the actual project. For the first few weeks we all got to know each other by chatting and discussing our favourite art forms. Something that stood out for me during these chats was our discussion of collaboration and what it meant to us. We all got to say what we thought, making the classroom environment very collaborative. We discussed whether people should have different roles within the project. I loved having these discussions and getting to know the artists, as it made the project a lot easier to work on.

Our first task was to write about somewhere special to us. I chose Lahinch as it is where I’m from and where I have spent many happy memories with my friends. We all shared our work with the class which gave us insight into our favourite places around the local area. Our second task was to record audio from somewhere in our area or community. I recorded the sounds of waves crashing on the beach as it is a sound that relaxes me, and I associate it with fond memories. We shared our sound recordings in class. After more discussion, where we looked for common interests in our chosen locations and recordings, we decided on what other footage we might need for our film. We all went to Lahinch with a film crew and equipment to record. We took film footage of the rocks, sand etc. We all had a go at filming and holding the recording equipment. This was a really fun day as we finally got to see a vision for what the finished project would become.

The next week in the classroom we received our first draft for the audio of our short film. It included all the sounds that we hand recorded earlier in the year as well as nostalgic music. The artists explained that our footage would be laid down after the soundtrack.

A few weeks later, we finally got to see our first draft of the whole film. Each scene was numbered. We got to say what we liked and didn’t like, by taking notes on each scene. It was such a great feeling to finally see what we had been working on for so long. Our feedback was sent back to the artists and videographer, where they would edit and tweak the footage to align with what our class wanted.

Participating in this project was such a great experience. We got to be part of a huge collaboration where all student voices were heard. It felt great knowing that my own ideas would impact the project. I’m grateful for this opportunity, as I got to learn more about collaborative artwork which is something I would love to continue exploring. Thanks to Jennie, Mitch, James, Fiona and everyone involved for this fantastic opportunity.

Teacher as Observer

Our artists, Mitch Conlon and James Moran, lead with a loose, conversational archiving style, asking students to explore their local hang-out spots, local stories or folklore. They listened for nuggets of information as students described where young people hang out locally: the Cliffs in Lahinch… the Sulphur baths in Lisdoonvarna, the Lake in Inagh, or some more virtual meeting spaces. The artists focused on places where students could hang out and be alone with their friends, to just be.

My favourite quote in the early weeks of the project was when I asked students for real feedback on the process so far: they answered with a slightly bewildered ‘I don’t think they even know what the project is about!’ It summed it up. The gap between the prescriptive, fact-based academic tradition, the ‘just tell me what to learn’, ‘answer-in-the-back-of-the-book’ learning model that is the points based Leaving Cert, and what Keystone proposed: a nebulous, prompting, listening, chatting, exchanging of stories, a watching for crossovers, for sparks of connection to form. A waiting with slight discomfort and frustration for the ideas to take shape. The creative process in action. This collaborative, democratic outcome is not a mode of working that sits easily within the exam system. Discomfort. Impatience. Underwhelm? It took a while… A low-level dread of maybe being made to ‘do drama and be on film’ pervaded until students realised that they needn’t be in front of the camera at all. That there were roles they could elect to play in the process. A gently guided ‘it’s ok to feel slight discomfort’ approach!

The artists showed footage of the 1980’s underground punk scene in Belfast. An anarchic idea for these digital natives: a place where you could go and be anonymous and express yourself with abandon.

It saddened me that the students haven’t known a world before the omnipresent smart phone, listening, snapping, recording their every move. Before Google Maps, eircodes, data analytical tracking, the rise of AI and Chat GPT. (I thank God regularly for the 90’s!!)

How do you hang out, away from surveillance. How do you disconnect and connect to each other, or to nature? The irony of making a documentary art piece about this was not lost on us.

For me, one student’s phone footage of their pristine white runners carefully negotiating a puddle summed up the duality poignantly.

Our art class has a wonderful diversity of cultures with Irish, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Ukrainian students. Google Translate was a welcome support for the visiting artists! When students began sharing and comparing their respective Christmas and New Year’s traditions and customs it sparked a particularly joyous exchange. Similarities were noted. Things began to click.

Momentum gathered via shared words, snippets of sound recordings, video, photos of clifftop sunsets, waves, the roar of a match crowd, the crunch of pebbles. Abandoned spaces..

Students had a blast with Mitch and James playing sound wars!

The next task: how to communicate isolation, togetherness, a mood, a feeling, an idea? ‘Film studies’ became real. Figuring out their individual role in all this. Listening. Making decisions. Voicing their opinions. Respectful communication. Shared outcomes. Compromise.

Life lessons. Soft skills. Play. Discomfort. Purpose. Trusting the process, and surprise at and -hopefully- pride in their finished product.

Collaborating in Sound Design

For my blog I have decided to discuss in detail one of my favourite days during the Keystone project. This was the sound designing session with Liam McCartan.

This was the explore and experiment stage of the project. Earlier in the week we were asked to record short clips of sounds that remind us of our themes of isolation, identity, privacy etc. These recordings were then sent to Liam, a sound producer. He arranged the audio clips in a wonderful piece of audio art.

We met with Liam digitally, through a zoom call. He introduced himself and let us listen to some of his previous pieces such as “Blue Morning”, and “Hold your Breath”. This gave us an insight into what the final piece could be like. We then listened to our piece, and Liam began combining it with other musical elements. He played around with different audio files, interchanging them, and adding audio effects. He also added different instruments such as guitar or keyboard to create harmonies out of the recorded clips. By doing all this he managed to enhance our recordings, making them sound more interesting. It brought out more emotion and so the themes became more obvious.

He explained the process very clearly. What I also really liked was at each stage he created a few options and allowed us to make decisions and vote on what we felt worked best. One of these decisions was to slow down a particular part. We felt this created a bigger and more dramatic atmosphere, or to layer a number of selected sounds to increase the intensity.

The piece was taking on a narrative. I could really hear the isolation feeling in some parts such as when the loud building of bird songs, the keyboard and other clips came to a climax, then everything stops and all we hear is the single beeping of the coffee machine. In other areas we agreed that the addition of the musical cords tied the sounds together, and gave it a familiar cinematic quality. A warm, joyful atmosphere was created which also reminded the group of times in our place – in our spot.

Overall the Keystone project was something I really enjoyed as I gained experiences in areas of art that I have never been involved in before. I gained a much broader insight into contemporary art and the different media that can be used. It took us away from the traditional idea of what art is and made us think a lot more about how to develop ideas.

A wide shot of the interior of an art classroom with students sitting in groups at their tables listening to guest artists addressing them.

The students of Coláiste Muire with teacher Aidan Power (left) during one of their engagement sessions with artist Mitch Conlon (centre-right) and James Moran (right), also pictured curator Fiona Gannon (centre-left). 2023 Arts in Education Portal Documentation Award, Keystone Project, Coláiste Muire, Ennis. Image Courtesy of Edel Doherty.

A Coláiste Muire Collective

I was instantly intrigued by the idea and inspiration behind the Keystone project. At its essence art should challenge our perceptions and viewpoints, provoke thought and discussion. By getting the students to focus on the local, and the everyday, they were challenged to reconsider their traditional concepts of what is worthy to be art. Moments in their own lives were investigated especially those centred around places they frequented around the town; their hang out spots.

These “spots”, these centres of interactions and events, often located in places unintended for that purpose; private places within shared spaces, offer teenagers a third space away from the restrictions and rules of home and school. A separate social dynamic for freedoms of expression and connectivity. Nevertheless, these places are normally frowned upon, considered loitering spots, adults tell youths to move on, to stop wasting time. The very idea that the artists wanted students to celebrate these places challenged their preconceptions of the value of these spots and in turn inspired further exploration.

The explorations brought us down a rabbit hole of new experiences where Mitch and James introduced the group to artistic influences such as the sound art of Mary Anne Amacher, and a documentary about protestors in Curraghinalt made by Emily MacFarland. Each piece inspired very much by the space they were captured in; the physical place and landscape told the story or was the story. This encouraged the students to go out and collect and gather content to tell theirs. They used sound recording, photography, written word and film. A multi-sensual catalogue of data was being built that would act as the primary source of a final realisation.

Our collective expanded further when the expertise of sound producer Liam McCartan and filmmaker Emily MacFarland were brought in to help build our content. Their choices, influenced by written reflections made by students, an interactive zoom call and on-site video shoot where students made creative inputs into all decision making. The experience of observing the layering and manipulation of individual sounds to produce a whole composition, along with the opportunity to use professional video production equipment was something I feel the students really enjoyed.

Seeing how, as the project developed, the students’ immersion within the project increased was something that was very enjoyable for me. Evident in their reflections their initial writings were basic literal descriptions of the sessions, but as the project developed and the students allowed themselves to become more absorbed, their writings became more conceptual considerations. They contemplated how themes could be communicated within the content; a swinging zipline rope from the playground could suggest isolation, a grove of trees in the fair green symbolised privacy in a public space. Their thoughts were now of symbolism and metaphor, associations were being sought outside of their literal meaning. This I believe was one of the greatest successes of the project; the opening of the student’s minds and realisation that all the resources they need to create and solve are often right there in front of them, they just need to give themselves time to look and observe.

How is the “voice of the child“ embedded in young people’s experiences of the arts?

Young people’s voices should be centred in our work. But, like the creative process, practicing this is individual and contextual. Conversations about voice centre on agency and relevance- how can young people have the choice to impact, make and experience the art they want? This is a beautiful aim that can take years to do properly.

Empowered, informed decisions take regular, positive contact with the arts and those with power. Time = trust. But time costs money and support. We often don’t have enough of this. How do we offer a quality experience when we don’t have the luxury of time? By seeing each encounter as an opportunity to encourage dialogue; each experience a chance to learn more about art and themselves. By giving a bold offer – a deep, specific artistic experience. Less, slower, better.

How could you choose to create a contemporary ballet exploring de-extinction, or see a punk-meets-storytelling gig about Medusa, if you didn’t know they were a possibility? By offering restricted formal and thematic explorations, with a rigorous process of reflection, we can encourage young people to think and make like artists; opening up endless avenues of choice. Any great artist training is a development and exploration of voice.

Encouraging curious disagreement and dissent deepens this exploration of voice. Shifting from what we liked, to what we’d like to see more of. We have power when leading, so how we handle and react to disagreement determines the honesty and depth of reflection we’ll get in the future.

Striving for quality in artistic aims, engaging young people in reflective practice, and exploring conflict will ensure a connection with the voice of young people; whether that’s a 30 minute feedback session for a piece in development, or a five year-long collaborative project. In this series of blogs I’ll reflect on how the voices of young people influence my work.

Voices & Choices

TAP training is fundamentally about partnership but the voice and needs of the child has always been central to its residencies. The first TAP residency I engaged in with artist Claire Halpin in 2014 centred around this premise. Documented on this Portal, it describes how through strategic questioning, guided conversation, real and virtual museum visits and exploration of materials, the children determined their own focus, process and product. As longstanding practitioners, Claire and I knew how to tailor experiences and scaffold the learning so that the children were not overwhelmed by choice.

Because faced with limitless choices, children often flounder. ‘I don’t know what to do!’ is commonly heard and needs an appropriate response. Sometimes this might be offering an open-ended programme where considerable time is dedicated to discussion, experimentation and reflection, focused on the arts with other curricular areas being developed by default. Other times, a residency programme might be anchored to enquiries in other curricular areas; the enquiry being the jump-off point for an in-depth arts-led exploration of a selected topic. While both approaches are valid, the latter integrates the arts fully into curriculum, utilises arts-based approaches in the everyday classroom. promoting holistic, inclusive learning. Yet, disappointingly, I have witnessed some members of the AiE community disparage this approach on the grounds that the children may not have elected, for example, to explore their class novel through dance or ponder the plight of our bee population through visual arts and poetry.

The hallmark of all authentic arts practice is that there is always more than one valid response. Likewise, responses to ‘the voice of the child’ can take many forms. Different children have different voices. Some may not know how to voice their needs or desires while other voices might dominate. I have learned through my considerable experiences in education and the arts that a range of approaches are needed. Some suit certain contexts while others need alternatives. The more approaches we are open to adopting, the more appropriate and nuanced our responses to children’s voices will be.

Both children’s voices and needs are worthy considerations when planning a residency. Skilled facilitators know this. Not only do they listen to words, they hear silences, observe body language, assess needs, provide relevant opportunities and scaffold learning appropriately; be that through open-ended arts-focused residencies where children’s leads are followed or through residencies that embed arts practices in curriculum to facilitate the learning and extend modes of expression for all participating children.

For the child who might struggle with literacy, being able to grasp meaning and embody learning through choreographing the class novel’s plot is transformative. I believe, if sought, his voice would be ones of relief and gratitude, relief to have found a new mode of learning and a voice in dance and gratitude for the opportunity to experience literacy through another artform, an experience the class might never have considered, if left solely to their own devices.

It’s the AiE Regional Portal Day. I’m in Kildare. The theme of the morning’s discussion; ‘The Voice of the Child’. Serendipitous! I’ve being reflecting on voices recently, both in my arts practice and in my role as an art facilitator.

Prior to my studies at NCAD and my engagement in TAP, I practiced art on a superficial level, drawing my world without mining it. I ended up profoundly disillusioned. It was only when I began to dig deeper in an attempt to map my inner narrative that I began to hear my own voices, not least those of the child and adolescent I was, and effectively, still am. At times, these were difficult voices to attend to; a cacophonous chorus whose ignored realities generated high-tides of anxiety, shame and grief. I’m no swimmer but swimming through them was the only way to calmer waters. So, I dived; art practice as my life-jacket.

This has been game-changing, transforming both my work and my facilitation of artists, teachers and children. In reengaging with my buried voices, I’m hearing more clearly the voices those I work alongside. I’ve learned that being in authentic communication with my inner child has expanded the register and sensitivity of my communication with others, alerted me to nuances my adult sensibility might not otherwise detect and enabled me to respond from a place of recognition, understanding and empathy. It has also rekindled my spirit of spontaneity, playfulness and fun; characteristic of both childhood and creativity.

I believe we can only truly hear the voices of others when we have embraced our own. So, in discussing the importance of the voice of the child, let’s expand that concept to consider the child’s voice in the hearts of the adults who work with them. We all need to remember and own what it was like to be that child. For while listening to a child’s voice is an act of attendance and hearing it is an act of acknowledgement, identifying with it is an act of acceptance and validation. And this is the first meaningful step towards giving the child the appropriate agency and support to express the truths of their experiences and engage confidently with their imaginations.

Teacher, Artist, Other

May 6th 2022. I visit a school in Cavan. My role; a ‘critical friend’ in an Action Research capacity on behalf of our International-Teacher-Artist Partnership (I-TAP-PD) PD Programme. I sit, observing, relishing what unfolds: An artist and teacher in near-perfect synchronicity, finishing each other’s sentence. I’m unable to tell one from the other. Digging further, I discovered that the teacher had taught the art skill to the artist in her kitchen and the artist prepared self-assessment booklets so students could track their learning. They have, in essence, exchanged roles and I’m witnessing my own audacious claim in action. “There’s an artist and a teacher in all of us.” But it’s really no surprise.

Vygotsky’s theories, cornerstones of modern curricula, hold that children learn primarily by observing and engaging in activities, guided by those more experienced, skilled or knowledgeable. Adults, whether parents, family members, neighbours, carers, coaches or community leaders provide the majority of this tuition, outside of formal education. As social beings who nurture our young, teaching is a critical human enterprise. We all teach, at some juncture, whether actively, passively, under contract or by default. It’s the impulse that spurs some graduates to choose teaching careers and prompts many artists to become involved in education, run workshops or engage apprentices.

Correspondingly, the compulsion to create is innate. Our capacity to imagine what does not exist is a cognitive strength that supports human advancement. To access and give form to creative thought, we engage in playfully explorative behaviours like acting, dancing, music-making, story-making, hypothesising, illustrating, constructing, concocting and crafting. These ‘creative’ practices are the fora for working through and testing our ideas. And creativity can manifest in many areas of practice; from book-binding to baking, from constructing mathematical theory to music-making.

One of Teacher-Artist Partnership (TAP) unique features is its potential to develop both competences in participants, the educator and the creator, waking the ‘other’ in those who stay engaged. This has supported me immensely in declaring my own identities and I trust my narrative will encourage others to recognise that the many hats they wear in life are equally worthy of recognition and validation.

A Question of Identity

September 2006: Circumstances forced me to abandon full-time art practice and accept a job-share teaching post. My ambiguous attitude to this turnabout and maverick methodologies prompted one of my charges to ask if I was a ‘real teacher’? Parents made more subtle enquiries. The school caretaker presumed I was an SNA.

Back practicing art full-time, I entered a school as the BLAST-assigned artist. The principal showed me around. Once our presence on the corridor was detected, a rumour raced from classroom to classroom; ‘There’s an inspector in the school!’

These narratives are anecdotal evidence of a professional identity dilemma I’ve wrestled with for decades. Artist or educator? Inhabiting this professional twilight zone had altered the lens through which I perceive labels like ‘teacher’ and ‘artist’; what it means to be either, both or to be more than the sum of these two entities.

Professional identity matters but it’s contextual. A singular definition casts us in two-dimensional stereotype, ignoring the richness of our many and evolving roles, cumulative experiences, skills and knowledge. I faced this dilemma on entering the Teacher-Artist Partnership programme in 2014. With an Education Centre network nomination, I was obliged to enlist as a teacher but yearned to sign the artist’s register. On introducing myself to the group, I claimed my artist identity, the only teacher to do so. After all, my teacher-self existed so my artist-self could be; the teacher supporting the artist, the artist sustaining the teacher.

Owning my dual identity felt bold but until did, I would never walk into a school as an artist. I’ve learned much on this journey, not least that there are many teachers in and beyond TAP who feel similarly. Some TAP-trained teachers are graduates of art/arts colleges. Others are skilled arts practitioners. Moreover, several TAP artists are former teachers and more possess intuitive teaching abilities, relishing engagement with children. August’s blog will further explore concepts of ‘teacher’ and ‘artist’, and the guiding and creative impulses we all possess. Meantime, for those reading, conscious of echoes of ‘the other drum’ in the recesses of their hearts, take comfort. There’s a teacher and an artist in all of us!

To the Stage

This month in Branar we are focusing on preparing for the live presentation of YOU’LL SEE…

In previous blogs, we have spoken about creating the film based on our adaptation of Ulysses for children and now, the next phase is for us to create a live theatre version.

We are back in the rehearsal room and must make some adjustments to the piece with the knowledge that we will have a live audience in front of us. In the film version, we were able to use the camera to dictate exactly what the audience would see through framing. However, with the live version, we have to consider the pacing, the clarity of the delivery and the visuals of the piece from the audience’s point of view. We also need to add elements such as lighting and sound cues, and everything that makes theatre different from other forms of presentation. This is challenging to do, but this is the art form we are most experienced in.

We have new members of the team now. Michael joins us as our technician and Debbie as our stage manager. The work becomes about supporting the performance and ensuring that what the audience sees is excellent every time. Helen Gregg who adapted the text with me is the performer and she now has to consider the audience as they watch the piece and ensure that they are following what she’s doing as well as being entertained by the piece.

The live performance will be longer than the film as we allow for pauses, moments to linger a little and hopefully laughter. We work on ensuring that the narrative makes sense by itself. We work on the pace to ensure that the audience has something interesting to follow at all times, whether that is the soundscape, the visuals, or Helen’s performance.

As I write this, we are preparing to present the show for the first time at the Cork Midsummer Festival for an audience of children and their adults. We are excited, nervous, and hopeful that all of our work over the past few months will pay off and that the audience will enjoy the fruits of our labor. We hope that they will leave entertained and knowing a little bit more about Ulysses, written 100 years ago by James Joyce.

My Bloomsday

Schools engagement project

This month at Branar, we have been focusing our attention on the engagement element of ‘You’ll see…’, our adaptation of Ulysses by James Joyce, for children age 7+. This engagement from children was at the forefront of the creation of You’ll See. Ulysses tells the story of one day in one city and this inspired us to ask the children of Ireland to tell us the story of one day in their lives.

We have been working in conjunction with our colleagues in the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) in Dublin to devise an engagement program that will allow children to respond to the video while also sharing their thoughts on what it’s like to be a child in 2022, 100 years after Ulysses was published.

We have a created a response template pack that is loosely based on some of the main questions or thoughts that are in the key episodes of Ulysses. The template pack consists of six prompts for the children to respond to. These prompts were created by Branar and MoLI after examining the school curriculum and deciding what prompts would allow the children who respond to be as creative as possible in their answers. The children are asked to respond to these prompts in their own way, be it through creative writing, or drawing images in response to the prompt questions. Our hopes are that it will be a creative process that gives us an insight into the life of children in 2022. The children will be able to engage with these packs as a class activity facilitated by the teacher after they’ve watched the You’ll See… video.

All the details can be downloaded from the Ulysses22 website.

Watch the You’ll See ….video here – ulysses22.ie/episodes/youll-see
Download the Worksheets here – ulysses22.ie/files/MyBloomsday.pdf

What is really exciting about this process is that the documents the children will create will be collected by the MoLI Museum and archived over the Summer. We decided that the archive should be created in a way that encourages engagement from children all over Ireland. We aim to do this by using technologies used by children on a daily basis to host the archived materials. This should hopefully allow children from all over the country to engage with each other’s responses.

Ulysses, Ulysses 2.2

This month in Branar we have been working on adapting Ulysses by James Joyce for children aged 7 to 12. This is a challenging project, but equally rewarding as we get to engage with the amazing text that Joyce wrote 100 years ago. We had to explore ways in which we could adapt that text to make it interesting and suitable for younger audiences.

The MOLI museum, Landmark Productions and ANU Productions created a yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of the printing of Ulysses, Ulysses 2.2. They commissioned 18 contemporary artists to respond to various episodes of the book using different art forms.

Obviously, Ulysses wasn’t written for young audiences and there is a lot of content, plots and subplots that are not really suitable for children. But there’s also a lot of magic in it, in its content, language and in the story, one city in one day, the 16th of June 1904.

We made the decision to follow Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, (the main characters) on their journey through the city during this summer’s day. They are two very different characters; one is sad mostly and thinks in poetry the other happier and thinks in short sharp thoughts. This allows the audience to clearly identify them as we travel through the day switching from character to character.

After reading the book I decided on the images that would best represent the action for each of the episodes, then working alongside my colleague and friend Maeve Clancy, paper artist, we decided on what those images would look like, and Maeve created a pop-up book version of Ulysses. The pop-ups are animated by performer Helen Gregg, who worked with me in the adaptation of the piece.

The pop-up book allows us to create new scenes quickly but also adds an element of magic and an element of surprise that will allow the children to really engage with the story and with the people within that story. There are 39 pop up images and two for each of the of the episodes, none of the pop ups work in the same way so there’s loads of visual content for the children to follow.

The text of the story is delivered brilliantly by Helen Gregg. Michael Chang, our composer, created a score that would complement all these elements. Adrian ferry, sound designer added a sound to the world and together with James Ryan who filmed it and we have created a film version of this pop-up story that will be available to schools nationwide they will be able to watch it and engage with the story and ultimately understand that Ulysses is a story about many many different characters in one city in one day.

The show is an invitation is to children two created their own story of their day on the 16th of June 1922 Bloomsday. All of these stories will be gathered by the MOLI museum and then they will be archived and the children will be able to access their stories online later in this year.

21 years of stories.

We are delighted to be celebrating our 21^st year of making work for children this year. We have the great privilege as arts to be allowed to create arts experiences for young citizens aged 0- 12 years. This privilege comes with a great responsibility also, because the day we meet a new audience member could be their first ever experience of the arts and it also could be their last.

Therefore, we must ensure that each and every artistic encounter we have with children is excellent, because we believe every child should have the best childhood possible and that excellent art made especially for them should be part of it.

We insist on calling our audience young citizen because as citizens they have the same rights as adults and therefore are entitled to every opportunity that an adult is entitled to.

Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child (1989) states that ..

“State parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.”

The importance of arts and culture for children cannot be understated and it is this belief that is the core of what we do at Branar.

We love stories, and we promise to create stories that children can enjoy. Branar was founded 2 April 2001, with the aim of creating arts experiences for children so that they and their imagination may thrive. Over the years, we have created over 22 shows, working with an ensemble of exceptional artists and creative partners including The Ark, Baboró, NIE (England), Starcatchers (Scotland), and many leading Irish arts centres and festivals.

This year we have also launched Meitheal, our new support initiative for artists creating work for young audiences across the performing arts disciplines. With this initiative, we aim to help independent artists create exciting new work for young audiences.

Over the next few blog posts, we will be giving some behind the scenes sneak peaks into one of the projects the team will be working on in the coming months.

Now it’s your turn! Here is a new toolkit to get you started

I am sure that by now, after reading previous blogs, you are ready to embark on a multilingual journey!

In this last blog I would like to share with you some practical tools and ideas that you can use and adapt to your environment.

Multilingualism in your day to day practice

If you are interested in shifting towards a multilingual approach, you will find many ideas for whole school approaches in One school, Many Languages, an interactive repository of resources, from blogs, to lesson plans, videos and podcasts, as well as articles based on the latest research and best practice from around Europe.

A fantastic example of some of these ideas put into practice can be found on the St.Mary’s Primary School website.

Celebrating multilingualism

As we approach International Mother Language Day, we can all get creative and imagine new ways to celebrate multilingualism with our children and our community. International Mother Language Day is a celebration marked by UNESCO on 21st February to highlight the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity for sustainable societies to foster tolerance and respect for others. All over Ireland, people are now getting ready to mark the day on 21st February, and using this toolkit you can get involved too!

Toolkit – mothertongues.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/IMLD_lang_garden_up.pdf

Ideas shared by teachers

Here is a list of ideas shared by teachers on how to create a special celebration around multilingualism. Of course, these can work any time of the year, and you could turn some of these into regular events!

A storytelling session where parents/grandparents tell stories in their mother tongue
A podcast showcasing everyone’s language
A blog to highlight the importance of International Mother Language Day
An activity to reflect on words that are difficult to pronounce or on the pronunciation of names
An activity around idioms or metaphors from around the world
A child-led survey of languages spoken in the school
Translating school signage in all the languages of the children
A multilingual mural with words in many languages
A video or written piece where children tell a story about their language, where it comes from, facts and figure

I hope that these blogs have brought you to think in a new way about languages and multilingualism!

Read the previous blogs in this commissioned series by Dr Francesca La Morgia here.

Building and touring the Interactive Museum of Languages for Young Audiences

There is a widespread belief that multilingualism is rare or special and that the norm is speaking only one language. This is far from true. There are more people in the world who speak more than one language than there are monolinguals.

It is often difficult to explain what it is like to have a language inside your mind that is “speaking to you”, that wants to emerge, but that has to stay silent. For years bilingual children in schools have silenced one of their languages (or more) to focus on the language of instruction, and this is something that will speak to Irish speakers all over the country.

This is what made me want to create a visual representation of multiple languages, which are normally invisible and intangible, but are present in our lives.

While this idea of creating a physical piece to increase visibility of languages and act as a starting point for discussion had been floating in my mind for a long time, but it was only a commission from South Dublin County Council Arts Office for Cruinniú na nOg that sparked my interest in pursuing it further. At the time there were several restrictions associated with Covid19, so a touring museum of languages seemed to be the right way to reach children in schools at a time of severe restrictions.

Creating IMLYA

The artist who was ready for the challenge was Tomasz Madajczak, who understood immediately the scope of the project and the potential impact it could have on all children.

Tomasz named his creation IMLYA, the Interactive Museum of Languages for Young Audiences.

Here you can hear Tomasz sharing a message for the children who are about to explore the museum.

In this video Tomasz talks about the different components of the museum.

Touring IMLYA

The museum started touring in May 2021 and has so far reached thousands of children in different parts of Ireland who have engaged with it in their own school, library or arts centre.

Through a collaboration with Wexford library, IMLYA recently visited children in schools across Wexford county and through the skilled facilitation of artist Fernanda Ferrari children created fantastic multilingual books that were then displayed in Wexford library and exhibited for all children, families and other visitors to enjoy. There is something quite magical about IMLYA, and children are immediately drawn to it, they want to touch it and play with it. There is also a very deep connection that children see in some of the pieces, as they remind them of their parents’ languages, of writing systems they see when they visit their family abroad, of sounds that “sound like home”. As an adult, I also am drawn to IMLYA and I see something new every time I look. There is a video of Tomasz himself telling a story in Polish, a poem by film-maker Jijo Sebastian in Malayalam, a fairytale told by artist Fernanda Ferrari in Brazilian Portuguese… so many people have contributed their knowledge, expertise, words and sounds, that IMLYA carries a very special meaning to me and my hope is that it will continue to inspire children around Ireland to be curious about languages and cultures.

Watch out for the next and last blog, where we will be extending an invitation to Celebrate UNESCO International Mother Language Day together!

Exploiting the creative potential of multilingualism

It is widely accepted that if you express yourself through art there is no “right way”, because art is about exploring all creative possibilities, and not necessarily by following a set path. When it comes to language, our unique and incredibly creative form of human expression, we are often brought to believe that the right way is the one that is “conventional” and that we can master this art only by following rules in a very strict way.

In this blog I would like to dispel the myth that in order to engage with languages we need to be experts, and share some reflections based on the ‘Language Explorers’ initiative.

Language is power

As Frantz Fanon stated in Black Skin, White Masks, “A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language. What we are getting at becomes plain: mastery of language affords remarkable power.”

Language has always been the repository of cultural traditions, behaviours and beliefs passed down from generation to generation. Most importantly, language has an influence on how we think, how we behave, socialise and reason. Language is power because when we feel that we are not understood, we feel powerless. When we see that our mother tongue is considered less valuable than other languages, we feel inferior.

Language is power because if you possess the linguistic skills of those who have power you are privileged, if you don’t you face discrimination. So how do we shift and revisit this power dynamic?

Who is the expert in the room?

I created ‘Language Explorers‘ to offer children a space to listen to each other’s language stories, to examine the neighbourhood they live in and get to know about languages, sounds and linguistic differences. If I am working with a new group of children, I can’t tell if someone is an Irish speaker and whether the same person can also speak Polish until we get to have that conversation. So, my first step is always based on an initial conversation open to everyone in the group. This often starts with me learning to say each name correctly, a small effort which has always paid off, both with children and parents. The workshops in class vary: we use interactive games, art-making, singing, storytelling, story writing, and more.

The biggest challenge in this work lies in accepting that I don’t know much about other languages, and I have no power to decide what is right or wrong. As described by Phil McCarthy and Annie Asgard in this video, for multilingualism to thrive we need to let children be the experts, and by led by them.

A resource I use is the Mother Tongues podcasts, which carry us straight into the world of multilingual families and offer many points of discussion and reflection. Being in English, they are accessible to all, but they also allow for a short immersion in another language and culture, and the scenarios described will be very familiar to many children. It is quite astonishing to see the reaction of the children when different languages are used or heard in the classroom, and I think this is summed up really clearly in Soraya Sobrevía’s article on her experience.

When talking to older children, I enjoy using George the Poet’s poem Mother Tongue because it goes straight to the heart of the challenge that many young people face. The children’s creative responses to this poem have led us to tears multiple times!

Most of our creative work can become multilingual if we allow languages to emerge from silence. There is no ideal lesson plan, because this is mainly a shift in approach. The task of the person facilitating this work is to accept to be in a state of “not knowing the right answer”, and to make a clear statement that welcomes all languages. It might seem obvious or redundant, but since children are normally not offered this opportunity and sometimes not allowed to use all of their language skills outside of their home, this needs to be a clear statement of intent.

You will need to say that your space welcomes all languages, and to show in your own personal way that you are keen to have multilingual poems and songs, that you would like a bilingual dialogue in your next play, that you will regularly offer a creative space where no language is excluded or marginalised, and where English is not your only priority.

Once you create a space for every language to be unleashed and used as a powerful creative tool, you will notice that children will do the rest, and the change you have brought about will be long lasting.

How to create a culturally responsive environment

When my first child started primary school I was very surprised to be invited alongside all the other parents to spend 15 minutes every week in the class to read together in small groups. It was the first time I walked into a classroom of 4 and 5 year olds where more than 10 different languages were spoken. Each parent was very comfortable speaking to their children in Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, French and Italian, and all the children were quickly accustomed to this immersive sound experience.

For years I studied the development of language in the early years, visited homes to test and assess children, but only when I saw my own children growing up in their dual Italian and Irish cultural and linguistic identity I realised the important role the school community would play in developing their confidence in who they are.

This sparked my interest in developing Mother Tongues with the goal of supporting parents and teachers in making the most of the linguistic and cultural diversity that is already present in our children’s lives. Culturally responsive teaching means making an active choice to leverage each child’s cultural capital to benefit everyone’s learning experience. It shifts the populistic narrative of cultural diversity as a challenge and turns children and families into funds of knowledge, with their lived experiences becoming an integral part of the curriculum and informing the teacher’s approach.

As in the classroom, I think a shift in the conversations and approaches to cultural diversity needs to change in our society, with a stronger emphasis on each individual’s lived experiences as unique and valuable in creating the common space we share.

This is why the work of Mother Tongues takes so many forms in order to enact change inside and outside of the classroom.

In this series of blogs I will take you through some key projects developed by Mother Tongues to achieve our mission and vision, to examine how arts in education can be instrumental in building a culturally responsive environment.

Mapping Outside

We went outside straight away to do some artwork. Tunde gave us a clipboard with two sheets of paper and explained what to do. Firstly we had to draw a bird’s eye view map of the school yard. Secondly we worked in pairs to use a view finder to find an interesting spot to draw. This was tricky as if you were holding the view finder you had to be still, our yard is quite big so it was hard to choose which area to map.

While we were outside, the portal filming crew called us in pairs to a quiet area to do an interview. We were asked questions like

“What was your favourite part?”

“What do you think art is?”

“What was hard about the artwork?”

“Can you tell us about Tunde?”

The interview’s were fun to do but at first it was a little awkward. It was our first time being interviewed so we were a little nervous but we really enjoyed talking about all the work we did this year.

Plaster

We collected materials outside to use to make prints. We collected things like sticks, leaves, flowers, feathers, twigs, grass ETC to put in. We mixed flour, hot water and cold water to make a plaster mixture. We all had a turn stirring the mixture. We poured the mixture into containers. We placed the materials we gathered outside into the containers and we left them to dry. We wanted this plaster to set and go hard so we could use it as a plate for printing, however, when we came back to class after the weekend, our plaster had stunk up the whole class. Unfortunately our plaster had not worked. We think we may have overfilled the containers or maybe used too much liquid. They never hardened and we couldn’t use them. If we were to try this again, next time we could; make the mixture differently and pour less into the containers, or use clay or plaster of paris instead.

Bridges

Our task was to make a bridge that connected or combined something in nature with something man-made. We were given a few materials to construct our bridges with – blue paper, skewers, straws and masking tape. We worked in small groups to make our bridges. We found it tricky to find a place to make our bridge as we had to find somewhere outside that had nature and man-made items. We enjoyed this activity as the materials were easy to use and we enjoyed being out in the sunshine working with our friends.

Bridges - Third Class Pupils, Scoil Mhichil Naofa, Co. Kildare

Recording our reflections

In class, we made a scrapbook to talk about the lessons we did with Tunde and Ms. Hourigan. We stuck in pictures from our lessons, art we made during our virtual, we wrote recounts about our sessions and we were able to write our thoughts and feelings about art in here also.

By Artur, Sochi, Katie and Renata

Making Plates

We looked at different types of leaves common to Ireland on the board. We chose a leaf we liked and drew it on a card. We had to make sure that they were bigger than our hand.

We stuck foam and corrugated cardboard onto our leaf. We had to make sure that none of the pieces were touching as we wanted mosaic design. This leaf would become a plate for printing. We used a screw to dot texture onto our leaves by leaving marks in the foam.

making leaf plate - Third Class Pupils, Scoil Mhichil Naofa, Co. Kildare

We used view finders to find an interesting view in our nature booklets. We drew what we seen in our view finder on to a piece of card and we enlarged it. After this Tunde called us up one by one to choose materials to stick onto our picture. Some of the materials used were wool, foam, string, piece of a woolly jumper, thread, netted paper, hessian, lace, matchsticks, grease proof paper and many other things. Next we used PVA glue to stick our materials to the plate.

making nature plate - Third Class Pupils, Scoil Mhichil Naofa, Co. Kildare

Printing

Our first printing session happened during our first day filming for the Arts in Education Portal as a part of the documentation award. We were very nervous at first but we soon grew confidence and we can’t wait to see ourselves on the video! Here’s what we did!

We used acetate, a roller, red yellow and blue block print ink to make orange on our acetate. We rolled the ink onto the leaf. We got another sheet of paper and placed it on the leaf plate. We gently rubbed the back of the paper in a circular motion to make sure the print transferred. We carefully removed the page and then ta-dah! Like magic, the print has appeared on the page.

printed leaf - Third Class Pupils, Scoil Mhichil Naofa, Co. Kildare

printing - Third Class Pupils, Scoil Mhichil Naofa, Co. Kildare

We repeated this three times on white, green, and blue paper. We repeated this process using yellow and blue ink on our second plate (nature plate) to make two more prints. We hung our prints on a clothes line in the classroom to draw. It took our prints around a week to dry and our plates are still inky a month later.

We drew a leaf onto green or yellow paper and cut it out. We folded the leaf into quarters and we cut out three triangles on each edge. We opened our leaf to find a diamond pattern inside. We used blu tack to stick our leaves onto a massive, long piece of card. We used pouches made from hessian, cloth and thread, bubble wrap and Styrofoam sponges to create prints on the card using block ink.

Everyone in the class worked on this piece together. This was our teacher’s favourite piece that we made because everyone worked together. We left our piece to dry over the weekend, and when it was dry we removed it the leaves and we were amazed to discover the blank spaces they had left behind.

We really enjoyed using the printing ink and rollers. We liked the way we were able to use plates that we had made ourselves in previous sessions. It was great to have lots of artwork made from the same plate. We enjoyed removing the page from the plate as it was very satisfying to watch the ink appearing on the page.

By Seán, Pippa, Tyra and Ryan

Discussion led our project

On our first face to face session with our artist, we had a discussion about nature and mainly the bog. We learned about sphagnum moss. Sphagnum moss is good for the environment as it gives us oxygen. From this discussion on our project became focused on nature

Tunde gave us a booklet which we would add to throughout the project. In this booklet, we drew our favourite nature place or thing. Many of the children drew woods, forests, trees, rivers, campsites and waterfalls. In this session we encountered our first difficulty by not being allowed to use rubbers. This was tricky as if you made a mistake you couldn’t rub out, so you would have to draw over it or turn it into something different.

After we drew our nature places, we wrote 3 words to describe this nature place.

We had a discussion about nature in danger. Sadly we were able to think of lots of places and things in nature which were in danger or in trouble.

Some of our ideas were:

Deforestation: cutting down trees.
Overfishing: which is exactly like its name.
Pollution: which is when you litter in the environment.
Forest fires: especially the recent Australian forest fires
Hunting animals for food and sports

We drew a picture of nature in danger in our booklet. We then chose and wrote three words describing our drawings.

We made nature in danger posters. We used our persuasive writing skills to try and convince people to save our nature places and things.

We liked making our nature booklets as we got to choose what we drew. It was fun to colour and draw in the booklets.

Post by Caoimhe, Igor and Fabian

Nature in Danger Poster - Third Class Pupils, Scoil Mhichil Naofa, Co. Kildare

The beginning…

Our project started in March during lockdown. We met our artist Tunde for the first time online. We did two sessions on video call on Google Classroom. Tunde showed us examples of her work and we came up with some ideas of what we might like to do in our project.

We completed our first art task at home. We drew a map of a place when we were at home. Some children drew real maps and some drew imaginary maps. Some ideas include : A map of school, A fairytale map, Memory map of a holiday in Czech, Inside a house, Japan, France, A layout of a ship.

When we got back to school we continued our project in person. We looked at real maps of counties, towns, places, countries. We looked at different symbols on the maps and tried to figure out what they represented. We listed all of our findings on the board.

We drew a map showing our journeys from home to school. We taped a long strip of white paper to our desk. The paper was cash register roll normally used for receipts. We had to draw everything we saw on our way to school. We choose three colours and we only coloured the things on the map which contained those colours. We recorded the sounds that we heard on our journey to school on our map by drawing symbols. We did the same thing for our other senses, what we smelled, touched and tasted.

We enjoyed using lots and lots of long receipt paper. We loved adding our senses to the map as this was something we had not done before. We found this tricky at the beginning because we had to try and remember what we experienced each time but we figured it out.

Post By Noelle, Megan and Linards

And Now….?

The unforeseen adventures that were created by being forced to re-invent, re-imagine, to find ways to re-connect with our audiences at this time of distance and disconnection had a profound impact on me.

It became clear that, for some of our audience, taking shows directly to where they are, taking the flexibility of the shows to a whole new level was what really worked for them.

So this year, inspired by that adventure and that discovery, I’m making a new show called SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS that can play anywhere. A garden, around a hospital bed, outside a school, in a hospice – wherever makes most sense of our audience. It’ll be a tiny intimate show with just two performers, a gentle magical soundtrack and two gorgeous costumes created by leading Irish fashion designer, Rebecca Marsden who works with responsive wearable tech fashion – costumes that light up with the connection we make with our audience, costumes that transform an ordinary space into an extraordinary moment. The development is funded by Wicklow Arts Office and will happen this July and September in creative consultation with St Catherine’s School, County Wicklow families and with St Catherine’s Hospice, hopefully leading to a longer tour next year to my national Network For Extraordinary Audiences.

And right now, we’re on week 3 of an 8 week tour of GROOVE – a chilled out 70’s inspired happening for children and young people with complex needs, full of immersive video and live harmony singing. In masks of course.

It’s a wonderful co-incidence that for GROOVE (conceived in 2019 so well pre-pandemic) that there’s such an overwhelming visual element – even with one side of the tent missing in order to allow sufficient ventilation – the combination of the immersive video art and the live singing to a hypnotic soundtrack is so rich and all around that it has an energy and a presence that, whilst not replacing the usual tactile offers that we might make, has a welcome viscerality.

I’ve been describing GROOVE as a happening – I remember reading the definition of a 60’s/70’s happening – in broad terms it’s about an environment being created and then what happens is totally dependent on who comes and what they bring. That’s the space and the adventure that I wanted to create with my audience for GROOVE.

I hardly dare hope that we’ll make it through all of the 8 weeks all over the country. I’m grateful for each day and for the incredible welcome that the schools have given and are continuing to give us in what must be the hardest year they’ve ever had. They truly are extraordinary audiences.

Throughout these last 18 months, the power of human connection has continued to be my lodestar and it, and my audiences, keeps me putting one foot in front of the other as we move forward as best we can.

Respond. Re-Imagine. Re-Connect.

The next chapter of my theatre adventures last summer was a re-imagining (or in fact three different re-imaginings) of my show SING ME TO THE SEA – created in 2018, SING ME TO THE SEA is a blissful watery adventure for children & young people with complex needs full of harmony singing, tiny waterfalls, shiny globes and rainbow fish that was created to be performed in hydropools with 3 performers and three audience members, each with an adult companion – with everyone in the water! [https://www.annanewell.ie/work/sing-me-to-the-sea/}

I’ve always said that the heart of my work is that it is flexible, that it is responsive, that it is nuanced moment by moment by our audience. And in Summer 2020, I had to really walk the walk with that one and take that flexibility and responsiveness to a whole new level.

So, with huge support (and flexibility!) from our funders and venue partners, we created a dry-land at-home version of the show. And we hired a campervan. For three weeks in August 2020, we drove around Dublin, Meath, Carlow and Wicklow, taking the show directly to families in their own gardens and driveways. We sang in the rain, we were stared at by milkmen, curious neighbour children gathered – and we were given the extraordinary opportunity to connect with our audiences where they were.

Later in the summer, we took this dry-land version to Baboró International Festival and performed the show in the magical setting of the gardens of the Ardilaun Hotel. And although they were only a few weeks into what must have been the hardest term of their lives, the special schools came in their droves – not only did we sell out the schools’ performances but we had to add more!

And, then, astonishingly, the wonderful pool staff at St Gabriel’s School & Centre called us up and said they’d like to give it a go. So, singing in masks and visors and working within AquaPhysio Guidelines, we were back in the water.

The unforseen adventures that were created by being forced to re-invent, re-imagine, to find ways to re-connect with our audiences at this time of distance and disconnection had a profound impact on me.

And it inspired a whole new show for 2021. More of that in my final blog…

How Spiderman Inspired Me Last Summer

In 2019 (which now feels like a decade ago), I made a new show for early years audiences called BigKidLittleKid. It’s a wordless physical theatre piece for ages 3-6 years about the complicated world of sibling rivalry. It opened at The Ark for Dublin Theatre Festival and toured to the Mermaid, the Civic and Draiocht.

Through the summer of 2020, I grew surer and surer about my commitment to finding a way to keep a live connection with my very particular audiences.

During what had become my weekly check-in with my wee brother, he was talking about some guy somewhere in England who’d dressed up as Spiderman and spidey-ed his way through his local streets to the utter delight of the children forced to stay at home in these first shut-in weeks of the first lockdown.

I’ve always been interested in making the ordinary extraordinary and believe that if you can literally change the landscape, you make visible the possibility of change and of hope.

So I hatched a plan.

Thanks to the Ready Steady Show programme run by my main producing partner the Civic, a wee pot of money was found to create a PopUp Play version of BigKidLittleKid which we played on a tennis court outside a summer camp, in a massive hall inside another summer camp and outside a nursery.

My favourite picture of the whole summer was the picture of the one pod sitting watching the extraordinary adventure that unfolded in their tiny playground with the second pod who weren’t allowed to share the same space as them, determinedly pressing their noses against the window intently watching the entire show.

For us as artists, being out there with our audiences again, hearing that very particular laughter of children delighted with a new story, a new connection, was extraordinary. Our hearts soared and I’d be lying if I said we didn’t shed a tear or two of hard-won joy and hope.

What. How. Why.

I remember really vividly where I was on 12^th March 2020. I was visiting the cast at the end of their 3^rd week of a 10 week tour of my show for babies ‘I AM BABA’ and our tiny gorgeous tent was set up in a rather grand hotel ballroom in Trim. We came out of the third show to the news of the announcement of lockdown. We threw the set and costumes back in my storage facility without masses of care – as we knew it was only going to be a couple of weeks.

I know.

For the next 2 months, I was lost, desperately trying to think what to do and how to do it.

And then I worked out that it wasn’t about the what or the how but rather about the why.

When creating ‘BLISS’, the first show I made specifically for audiences of children with complex needs, I was doing some creative consultation in a classroom and over the course of these few days these children revealed to me what I think theatre is – one human being connecting with another. That’s it. And that my job is to create the optimum conditions for that connection.

And for my audiences, the optimum conditions overwhelmingly are that it’s a live experience.

The work has always had at its very heart the live responsive connection and an inherent and crucial ability to nuance and change from moment to moment. And I realised what I had to do was to take this built-in flexibility to a whole new level…

Thanks to the incredible support of funders, venues, audiences and artists and more than a little bit of luck, I managed to tour work live for 8 weeks in the summer, autumn and winter of 2020.

And in my next couple of blogs, I’ll tell you the how and the what.

Growing during Closing

October, falling leaves and creeping numbers. It was a month of growing in a season of closing. My colleague Ciara Heffernan led our school approach to Creative Clusters within our theme, Connecting and Reconnecting. This creative collaboration between Cluster Schools is an exciting new dimension to our arts programme. The extension of the Creative Schools programme with Associate Gabi McGrath has enabled us to develop creative partnerships with artists from a range of different disciplines. Early Years Music Specialist Nuala Kelly returned to complete a partnership with Mrs. Cushen and Ms. Heffernan, while a range of classes from Junior Infants to 2nd Class will work with multidisciplinary fine artist Francesca Hutchinson, dancer and visual artist Kate Wilson and storyteller Thomas McCarthy. It is a privilege to work with and support artists in the current climate.

Teacher Artist Partnership would like to wish all our summer course participants well as they engage in their TAP residency and we look forward to sharing in the work. Our Design Tutor Team are extremely proud of the work and achievements of our National TAP Coordinator Dr. Katie Sweeney, Tralee Education Centre Director, Terry O Sullivan and Administrator Máire Vieux in securing Erasmus + funding to develop our programme on a European level with partner countries Serbia, Austria, Netherlands and Greece. Within this initiative our Design Team have been working on a series of mini-creative moments called Take Ten with TAP which we look forward to sharing with you soon…watch this space!

Thank you, Portal, for this space to share. Thank you, reader, for reading.

It’s lovely to do something with our hands, other than sanitise.

Returning to school felt different this year and the children were wonderful. They marched down hallways leaving parents at the gate, washed hands and met the new school measures with their best efforts to work together and keep each other safe. Our school leadership did everything in their power to make children, staff and parents feel as safe and comfortable as possible in school during these uncertain times.

However, and undeniably, Covid 19 has disrupted the familiar flow of school rhythms by adding its own disjointed systems of distancing, washing and vigilance. But the primary focus of our work remains as it has always been, to meet the deepest needs of the children in our care through education and with love. From lower numbers of referrals to Tusla, to a decline in educational attainment for some children, school closures have had a detrimental effect. In my reopening, arts-based learning and the role of embodiment has been crucial to connecting mind, body, and spirit in the classroom. This is especially relevant in Infants, where the teacher’s physical proximity and comfort of touch has been severely limited.

Teaching is about listening, to the body and the words. This September, children have been communicating. From a child who needs to run at full tilt for an entire PE lesson, to a quiet daily request “Teacher, will you read us a story?”. Though I always do, the request is about reassurance and meeting a need. In the absence of a hug or handhold, I have looked to the arts to affirm the place of comfort, grounding, and reassurance. We have used music, dance, visual arts, yoga, stories and meditation, concentrating on the sensory nature of experiences, objects and materials. Twisting, cutting, playing, pasting, moving and focusing, it has been lovely to do something with our hands other than sanitise.

“I believe that two lines of poetry can save a life”, Paula Meehan

As a teenager my wonderful English teacher Ms. Meade guided us with heart and skill through the Leaving Certificate poetry curriculum. In subsequent college years, the melancholy, timeless glory of John Keats poems gave solace, comfort, and a lexicon of poetic potential to my growing adult mind and experience. In fact, his anthology became a strange amalgam of thoughts, diary, and scrap book throughout my college years.

Just before Laois went into lockdown, I had the deep, nostalgic pleasure of returning to a house on the coast built by a dear friend’s Grandfather. While standing in his beautifully eclectic functional cobbled kitchen, I listened to a John Bowman interview with John Hume, where he spoke of influential teachers in his young adult life and their impact on the man he became. My friend’s Grandpa passed away in my 3rd year at university. On return home to Stradbally, I found my Keats anthology and there with “On the Sea” was a dedication to Mr. Rafter, a man who shared his home and life perspective with a granddaughter’s friend. It was a powerful blend of comforting memory and poetry. The power and confluence of memory and art.

It packed a punch, because in June I had a miscarriage. Denise Blake, my TAP colleague, and friend introduced me to Paula Meehan’s a most wonderful phrase; “I believe that two lines of poetry can save a life” (www.irelandchairofpoetry.org; www.deniseblake.com). I never really thought poetry was for me, I certainly never expected to write a blog about it, but in June nothing else would fit. It helped. All the learning, loving, yearning, and feeling given by the poetry of others heaved my pain on to the page. John Keats never had a miscarriage, but he knew about loss. The poetry of others gives a window to their soul and a template to the lived human experience that sustains through sharing.

When we, teachers, artists, and humans, give arts-experiences and heartfelt connections, we can never know or ever fully document the possibility and power of that exchange. So, this blog stands in defence of, and to champion the unknowable outcome of arts education to a life being lived.

Becoming and Understanding Through Partnership…Teachers, Artists, Children

“Art is a fundamental human enterprise…In making art we make ourselves. In understanding art, we understand ourselves”

(Council of National Cultural Institutions, 2006)

A few years ago, Jane O’Hanlon from Poetry Ireland shared the quote above at a Teacher-Artist Partnership planning meeting. It nestled into my soul and over years bore unexpected fruit in unanticipated times. March 2020 was both unexpected and unanticipated.

As a Primary Teacher in Holy Family Junior School, Portlaoise I had been enjoying the roll-out of our 2nd year with Creative Schools, planning a Teacher-Artist Partnership (TAP) Residency with Senior School and visual artist Caroline Conway and asking the Arts in Education Portal if I might blog the process.

Then…global pandemic.

Teaching and learning shoved online, Dojo launched, and Teams formed. Some school relationships wound tighter while others were jettisoned into the unknown…uncontactable, yet still loved and worried about. In the connected isolation of primary teaching in a pandemic, during the seismic refocusing of the Black Lives Movement, the personal and professional values that are lived through teaching felt more important that ever. In this context our TAP Design Team began to rewrite our summer training programme for delivery online.

TAP Online 2020 was controversial for us to commit to as a concept. We strive for a deeply creative, reflective and connecting style of professional learning that hinges on face-to-face interaction. Where we lost this in-room exchange for artists and teachers, we gained a most incredible, technicolour window into the creativity, emotionality, and deep-commitment of teaching professionals to working in artistic partnership with and for the children they teach. The artist-teacher partnerships of TAP 2020/21 will be led by our community to process pain, heal hearts, and build new identities through creativity, connection and love-in-the-arts for the children of Ireland.

“School should foster an environment that allows children access to explore their identity in the sanctuary of ART – I aim to do this in my classroom.” James O’Donnell TAP Participant 2020

Online collaborations, TAP’s new online course and ‘busting the myth of the solo artist’

I have been very lucky over the past weeks to have the company of two exceptional dancers, joining me virtually as part of my ongoing research, looping embodied movement and drawing practices. I have been surprised at the level of connection that is felt in these sessions despite the lack of real physical presence and the dodgy internet connections!

Taking time with discussions and reflections along with the moving, writing and drawing are essential parts of the research and perhaps it is this multiplicity of audio and visual modes that has helped to bridge the virtual gap.

Having this research alongside the Magnetise Project, ‘A call for Home’ has been mutually beneficial, with many cross overs emerging. The shift in dynamic from group to one to one has also brought important insights for my virtual platform collaborative practice.

Now that the last of the 360 cameral equipment for the project has finally arrived it is great to be at the stage of exploring this new potential for our collected video works and live interactions.

The last couple of weeks have also been busy ones for the TAP (Teacher Artist Partnership) design team. In particular, for the two members who took the helm and within a very short timeframe have created a fantastic online version of the TAP CPD summer course. Next week we will run the course in its online format for the first time. We are looking forward to the live aspects and forums, and to interacting and assisting participants on their journey through the modules. As part of the course I will host a live dance session mid week and was delighted have the opportunity recently to create a short video with one of my long term collaborators, artist Isolde Carmody. The video is a reflection on arts and diversity and will be featured in the course. Embracing diversity in arts and education, understanding the inherent collaborative nature of practice, and in Isolde’s words ‘busting the myth of the solo artist’, all feel as vital as ever to keep to the fore, in todays wider sociopolitical context.

Art is Life by Kate Wilson and Isolde Carmody

Finding rhythm in life and work and remembering John McGahern

Whilst the Magnetise project is blossoming online with added excitement about our first order for VR equipment this week and a new online project with RYCP just beginning, I am taking the opportunity granted by a slower pace to reflect on some of the fundamental shifts in my own life and practice.

Virtual Duets – March 2020

I find it hard to think of a colleague who has not in recent years expressed a wish for more time, and perhaps particularly those of us that are both artists and parents.

Lately busy has looked very different for many of us. For me there has been no driving kids to school and later on to classes. No traveling to schools near or far for residencies, or to arts centres or arts offices for meetings. No trips to London for MA modules, and no trips to Glasgow to look at accommodation and courses with my eldest daughter. And whilst time seemed to expand in the first couple of weeks, recently it’s quickly filled with domestic and family time. Lunch has become an event rather than a sometimes forgotten extra. Baking bread all part of the reduced shopping trips and growing vegetables has presented itself as essential. Dealing with the new shifts and at times struggling to find the time I want for my practice it’s still a case of exploring where the balance lies.

These last weeks, I have a sense of returning to a forgotten rhythm. A working life here in the north west in the late 90’s, before family and before the Celtic Tiger. The rhythm and pattern of my days relating more to the season and weather than schools and institutions. Living and working simply, and taking inspiration from the land in a way that felt not unlike the surrounding local farmers, back before the boom.
I was commissioned by the council to paint John McGahern at that time. A beautiful and generous man, who gave up the best part of a week to sit in the small cow shed that was my studio, each day insisting on taking me out to lunch. In a documentary I watched sometime later he talked about how since returning to Leitrim his days were divided between writing and farming. Four hours writing in the morning was enough and then his time was with the land and the animals. In a sense an artist never really stops working and when I think of Mcgahern’s afternoons I think about how his work lived and breathed this land. I think about time to process and his afternoons being a focus and a contemplation. A focus I was finding at that time having left the big city for a rural existence. Perhaps now there is again opportunity to reconnect with the rhythm and pace of this beautiful land and from here come closer to our own patterns in life and work and the importance of balancing activity with contemplation whilst knowing it’s not necessarily about returning and but a reimagining of a way we’ve long known.

The Magnetise Project is currently highlighted on The Creative Ireland Programme website.

www.creativeireland.gov.ie/en/news/magnetise/

Frank is an Irish designer /cultural producer with an interest in film, the arts & architecture. His professional practice includes the design of buildings, & set design for film/television production. He holds a BA in Architecture, 2008 and a Professional Diploma in Architecture, 2012 both from London Metropolitan University. Prior to this he recieved a B.Des. in Production Design for Film/Television, from IADT. This background has informed his approach to practice, which is collaborative, interdisciplinary and site specific.Interested in the critical potential of design he established Architecture at the Edge in 2017, for which he devised and curated the events programme. He produced an outdoor installation, ‘Ghost Chapel’ for Galway International Arts Festival 2018 in collaboration with the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Growing our Connections – Blog 4

Having taught the National Architects in Schools Initiative for the past three years I find it can still be quite a daunting task when faced with a new group of students.

Many of the students don’t understand the value of their built environment because they have never seen the benefits it can offer them.

It’s difficult for students to learn without experiencing connections as to the concepts we teach them. This can be achieved through providing both context and relevance. Without that connection there is no interest, and interest always precedes meaningful and authentic learning. So it’s essential that we are making strong learning connections to help them develop the thinking habits they need to succeed.

Schools are comprised of the people in the community. Coming from outside it’s important to understand the community your students are a part of. Mountbellew is a quiet rural market town 45km from Galway on the N63 to Roscommon. Once the home of the Grattan-Bellew family, famous Galway parliamentarians during the 18th and 19th centuries. The former demesne is now a delightful wooded area of forest walks and picnic areas, filled with interesting historical items.

Upon my first visit to Mountbellew, whilst seeking out a connection to the place, I was drawn down an inviting avenue of beech trees where I was immediately taken by the sight of a 7m high wall, the enclosure to an extensive eighteenth century Walled Garden which was once part of the large Bellew estate. For a century and a half this walled garden was used in the manner of all such Victorian/Edwardian gardens, although simply because of its size, more than household fruit and vegetables were probably grown.

I learned that the long term aim of the local heritage group here is to rejuvenate, conserve and develop the 18th century walled garden. Developing this existing heritage resource will provide a new amenity for the area. It will also complement other local heritage and recreation assets helping attract visitors to the area stimulating rural tourism.

From the outset I knew it was important to set a clear and engaging agenda with the students and so by way of introduction find something in their common experiences to which the lesson can be attached. Here in the walled garden is a space to explore, walk, discover and feel inspired by all it has to offer; a reminder that as times change natures story goes on. To function as a place to grow food, for pleasure and wellbeing.

Before we launched into making any propositions it was important to give time to the students and allow them articulate their ideas. Topics were selected for the students to share in groups. Investigation into the history and functions of various types of garden generated one starting point for beginning transformational change such as should its use be as a kitchen garden distinct from a decorative one. The many ways we experience gardens were discussed. The pleasure garden, the kitchen garden, the memorial garden and/or as a place to re-connect with nature. A presentation by the local heritage group committee members was followed the following week with a guided site visit.

In speculating on its potential one of the students reminded us that the parents of Anna Kriegel had planted a white cherry blossom at her favorite spot and unveiled a bench which bears an inscription with her name. Another then talked of the seat under a tree at the Mountbellew walled garden which ladies once sat how they might propose to do the same. The sense of a connection to place and how that can relate to our own experience of the world underpinned the project. This is about learning how everything is interconnected and interdependent. Understanding the relationship between things can help people see and understand their community in different ways. That association with people and place is fundamental.

Students learn by exposure to real life examples and their experiences and observations of these examples greatly accelerates their learning. Part of this task required the students to ‘Look Locally’ i.e. Find clear links between the lessons and the things that are transpiring in the local community, and even get them actively involved with community individuals. It’s about teaching and learning that is focused on student centered inquiry.

A second field trip was organized, with a group assigned to conduct an on-site survey which would inform the task of making of a 1:100 site model.

Making the model allowed the re-imaging of the walled garden to take shape. The resulting design links a series of new public spaces/ rooms and reuses an existing building as a community hub / cafe to give purpose and a variety of gathering places to the center of garden.

The aim here was to create space for every young person to be at the center of co-designing their own future, community spaces, projects and campaigns. To give voice of the student and allow them give that voice back to their community.

In working with the students like this I hope that it will stimulate them to become actively involved and engaged in shaping their local built environments and landscapes. Place-based education promotes learning that is rooted in what is local—the unique history, environment, culture, economy, literature, and art of a particular place—and it promotes a place-specific, sustainable approach to living, working and playing in our 21st century rural communities. The main objective is to attract interest and support from the community at large and to help re-educate ourselves about the importance of sustainable and healthy living.

Young people need a space where they can be unafraid to explore. As a result, the sense of place created by a village’s cultural heritage links directly to a community’s sense of identity, which can ultimately enhance people’s overall sense of being and belonging and quality of life. The walled garden at Mountbellew offers this. They need to live it, grow with it, tend to it. For them, it can be a space of hope and promise: if we put in the right effort and intention just about growing our connection to nature, it is essentially growing our connection to each other.

A Call for Home

Magnetise 2020 and collaborative practice in lockdown

In these unnerving times of isolation, connecting through collaborative projects will be an important life line for many artists. And although at times worries may override our ability to work at our best, the possibility to be together, to keep working, inspiring each other and reflecting together may well turn out to be even more important than pasta and toilet roll!

I have spent some time in the last few days considering the possibilities and challenges in this new climate for some of my ongoing projects. As an artist who has continued to embrace the sensorily rich materiality of charcoal and fabric and paint, has veered a little shy of technology and whose performance practice often involves contact dance forms, I find myself looking squarely at the important role online technology will now take going forward. An example is the Magnetise Project. This project, which was selected for both local and national awards last year, has to date centred around week long residencies and workshop periods where the internationally based artists and local community groups have collaborated in a combination of professional development and community based practice. We are delighted to have secured the funding to continue the work this year and build on the existing relationships and themes. The project investigates the potential of renewed attention to gravity, through somatic movement, sound and drawing practices as a means deepening our connections to landscape.

At the end of 2019 we began developing the next phase, ‘Magnetise, a call for home’. This title, (increasingly poignant in the current climate), reflects an interest to explore the connections not just between ourselves and landscape but relationships between land and identity, and the idea of being at ‘at home’; in our body, our community and environment. The six dance artists collaborate with participants from two of the community groups this year, (three adult performers who are wheelchair users and three youth dancers) towards the creation of a joint performance. For now all work will happen remotely and a final performance space may take the form of a split screen video rather than theatre. We will explore the potential of zoom for discussion and workshop facilitation and the website for sharing and reflecting. We will also explore the use of VR sets and cameras for live streamed and filmed work, combining layering and real time interaction.

For now keeping connected in meaningful and creative ways feels as important as ever, as does deepening connections with home and land. Magnetise, like other projects, will, I hope offer a frame to keep a group together and to keep collaboratively making. To read more about Magnetise visit www.undercurrentdancefilmtheatre.com/magnetise

Image copyright: Kate Wilson

Diversity and Every Duck is Different

In October last year I was invited to attend the Europe in Perspective conference in Dortmund with Dr Katie Sweeny and the TAP (Teacher Artist Partnership) design team.

Teacher-Artist Partnership CPD focuses on enabling teachers and artists to jointly develop their understanding, expertise and creativity in ‘arts in education’ work with children and young people. The initiative was developed under the Arts in Education Charter and has run since 2015 and is now delivered each year first week of July in Education Centers under the Creative Ireland Programme. To date in excess of 1,000 teachers and Artists have been trained under TAP CPD in Ireland. There is now a big interest at EU and international level on Teacher-Artist partnership as a model for enhancing Arts education in Schools.

The conference in Dortmund, ‘Every Duck is Different, Challenging our perspectives on Europe and Culture’ was the final conference/ training in the Transnational Training on Diversity and Cultural Learning.

(For more information and great resources visit their site! europe-in-perspective.eu. )

This conference was developed to explore how diversity can be addressed by arts and education practitioners. The two days were packed with thought provoking group activities and presentations from speakers including Dr Ipek Demir and Szilvia Németh. Two young activist groups, Europe Fiction and Polotics of Hope, had been invited to close the conference. The fresh perspective, intelligence and passion of their interventions added an incredible further dimension.

I’ve been thinking about how I address diversity in my own practice. Cultural diversity is increasingly part of the rich fabric of our communities and schools, and it is important to keep checking in with established frameworks and methods, being conscious of the need to be flexible in this context. Diversity is about recognising that ‘every duck is different’. That we support each other to grow through recognition of the strength of our individuality, and our ability to think critically and independently. To fully enjoy difference, finding interest and inspiration in this so that we can move towards a world where not just cultural, but also intellectual and physical difference is truly supported and celebrated.

It was great to bring some of the learning and inspiration from the conference to the TAP lead facilitators up skilling day in February. Many of the lead partners have a new residency this year which is a fantastic opportunity to keep bringing the theory in to practice.

An exciting development for TAP since the conference is the creation of international dimension to TAP, (ITAP). Building on relationships with new partners from the conference, we are in the process of developing a European programme of shared practice and exchange.

“Observation is more than one thing – we use our eyes to analyse an image, and we also use thinking, and our senses and emotions to interpret what we are seeing” – Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder

A Conversation with Primary School Teacher, Jane Malone

For this fourth and final blog about Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder, it is timely for me to reflect on some of our learnings from the VTS training pathway for educators. Over 150 educators, from classroom and museum settings, were supported to access the VTS training pathway with VTS/USA. This happened, through a partnership approach that allowed a range of partners across local, national and European to fund a unique training programme.

The research evaluation framework for Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder will capture the ‘impact’ of the VTS training pathway on educators training and practicing VTS in schools and museums across. Findings will be presented by VTS Nederland at our Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder Conference on 21 April 2020 in Dublin Castle.

Between now and then, we are considering what is next for our work with VTS. What are the existing mainstream teacher and artist training pathways that could offer support to the VTS training pathway? How do we hold on to the value of peer to peer learning across a the mixed cohort of educators – artist, art educators, secondary (art) teacher and primary school classroom teachers? How do we support mixed groupings of trainees to continue to access enjoyable and deep VTS learning experiences about art, learning, classroom and community where every individual voice is valued and heard?

The cross-disciplinary potential for VTS is striking. Art is the starting point and the transferrable skills for the trained VTS educator and for the participating group become more and more obvious with regular practice. For me, the most obvious win for VTS practice is within the primary school or early years classroom. In these classrooms, multiple subject areas sit alongside each other, but objectives for building patterns of learning, thinking and communicating are overarching priorities. This is approach to learning is more and more mirrored in the modern workplace. Artists, lawyers, farmers, employees and entrepreneurs across all disciplines must show flexibility in their thinking and their approach to running their business/getting their product out there/meeting their client needs. Problem solving and team communication skills are key in order to do that. Teams must use their observational skills and thinking skills in tandem with a bigger picture approach which is supported by being open to differing points of view, to allow for benefit from other people’s experience along with their own.

Below, Jane Malone, a primary school teacher from St Catherine’s NS, Donore Avenue, talks about how VTS has strengthened her practice in facilitating students’ learning; how this practice is a tool for communication skills, such as deep listening and respectful discussion; how it is a tool for opening students up to their own thinking processes to support how they learn, access knowledge and problem solve; how this practice can transfer from art, to maths, to science to SPHE, to oral language development, to project development.

What do you find VTS brings to your practice as a primary teacher?

In a primary school classroom of today, we are facilitators of learning, more so than the traditional idea of teachers. VTS definitely highlighted to me the skill of being a facilitator. You facilitate the thinking skills you want them to have or the writing skills you want them, but where they take it is theirs, as long as it’s appropriate.

I find our VTS sessions are a great tool for demonstrating and practising active listening. When someone is making their observation, and when I’m paraphrasing back, they are all listening. Their hand isn’t up with their point, it’s a shared listening experience where they can see what the speaker is seeing. That has really helped in terms of general classroom management, but also for turn taking in terms of respectful conversation. This is something that can’t be explicitly taught. At the same time, it permeates all the other lessons, because we all get so used to the process.

I also find our VTS sessions very inclusive, because it’s not about ability, it’s about the picture or the piece of art that you were looking at, and ‘my opinion’ is not the rightopinion, it may vary very differently to what ‘your opinion’ is. It’s accessing art on all levels for all children of all abilities, not just for the ‘arty’ children or the people who like that piece of art. It takes how art used to be untouchable, it was in galleries, behind frames, it’s opening it up to multiple possible interpretations.

For me, VTS impacts all the curriculum areas, particularly the language elements and the social and emotional aspect of things as well. I use it with ‘Number Talks’, and with anything I’m doing in SESE where I’m facilitating project-based learning and they’re determining where they’re going to take the project. VTS fits well in particular, with the New Language Curriculum, with Irish and English, and how it describes the role of paraphrasing the students comment, that no comment is incorrect, but the paraphrase back is the teaching and learning moment. The children are becoming more aware of how I am teaching them, more familiar with the paraphrasing process, and this gives them the confidence to make the comment, in a language lesson, without worrying about being right or wrong.

What have you noticed happening in your work in the classroom with VTS?

The group I have this year is sixth class. I had them in fourth class, when I started practicing VTS in the classroom. So this year, when I do VTS with the children, I begin a session by talking with them about the broad concept of thinkingthat happens when we do VTS – ‘what is observing?’ We talk about using our eyes, and the role of listening. We go deeper with an art image and talk about how we use our senses to observe, and also how our emotional response informs our thinking.

I began this year’s science curriculum with an exercise where we took a roll of Sellotape and passed it around the room. Each child had to make an observational comment about it, as it was passed from person to person. The reason why I blended VTS with this exercise, is because in VTS with art images, you are naturally talking about story, setting, materials, bringing in previous experience and knowledge. So, in this Sellotape exercise, I was really conscious that it can push them to build more sophisticated language for what they are describing. I keep my paraphrasing conditional and label the thinking processes so that the children can recognise that their thinking processes can transfer from the VTS exercise we do with art, to this exercise, which is more about introducing scientific language for observation. It’s a really successful exercise because you can hear them talking about texture of the Sellotape, using language to describe it based on their senses, describing it’s shape based on their knowledge of maths, making metacognitive statements that are bringing information from other bodies of knowledge.
I see that this is how I am going to bring my VTS practice forward. In the classroom, I’m trying to create an atmosphere of STEAM versus STEM. VTS is one of the methodologies that supports me to do this. I use mind maps and Elklan (a process to meet the speech, language and communication needs of children) with topics where we build vocabulary and language. I find VTS coming into play more for the more technical curriculum subject areas such as the literacy skills of breaking down a language, looking at and attempting maths problem solving, and also for science.

How important do you think that silence at the beginning to observe is?

Very. But we do that in another form in our ‘number talks’ as well, so you put up your number sentence and then you literally wait. It’s very hard when you’re initially doing it as a teacher, to wait long enough, standing in silence is quite difficult. Because we had been doing it in ‘number talks’, I was then able to marry it, so I give them quite a bit of time. It does occur to me each time I do it “I wonder how long everybody else gives?” Sherry Parrish is the number talks guru, so if you watched one of her videos you’d understand the similarities. It’s “how would you do this?”, “how did you come to your conclusions?”, “now, tell the rest of the class how you got that answer or why you went that way” or “what does everybody else think of the way X did that sum?”. So again, it’s similar a similar process of supporting thinking and social learning.

Can you recall a favourite VTS Image Discussion?

One of my favourite VTS sessions was when I was practicing on the Permission to Wonder training in Helsinki. I was looking at the image for the first time and not sure where it would go with the group. There were many different interpretations of the image from individuals and so I had to really concentrate on my paraphrasing. It showed me that my paraphrasing was really working well for me, I was hearing as I was speaking. It was really challenging, but there seemed to be a flow. I remember this as I learned so much from it.

Another one that sticks out in my mind, with sixth class last year, they kept on trying to identify the images as being staged. ‘Oh this has been deliberately set up as though it was in the 1960s and it was deliberately provocative because….’ – they were really cynical about the image and it felt like there was an inflexibility of their engagement with it. They were more about creating the backstory about why the artist did it, than observing what it was in front of them. I found that really interesting.

One other one, was a picture of a woman in a subway surrounded by a lot of men. She is to the foreground, and one of the children that has anxiety identified it as her experiencing great anxiety and nobody around her knowing it. So that kind of projecting their own emotional states onto the images we are looking at, I find that really interesting.

It sounds like for you, in a VTS image discussion you are observing the ‘thinking’ going on – either your own thinking or the students thinking?

It definitely would be part of my practice as a teacher. We are here to teach skills, in particular to understand that there are thinking processes and to help them to figure out how to support these processes for themselves in the future. So they can access the facts. Who remembers all the rivers and mountains of Ireland, it’s more about how you going about researching that information and your thinking process around researching the question that’s important.

How did Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder support you to develop your VTS practice?

It greatly supported me to put aside my learning and experience and become open to a new way of engaging with languages. I found that really interesting as languages are ‘my thing’. I have a degree in French and Italian, English and Gaeilge are my favourite subjects to teach, and I love grammar, so it was fascinating to me how I struggled with the VTS questions at first. They felt so American and strange to me but when I saw the huge body of research behind them and experienced firsthand how effective they were in keeping a rein in on the facilitator’s natural bias, I was completely converted. It was also really comforting to work with such experienced artists and art professionals and see how my lack of experience did not impede my ability to facilitate a VTS session. Finally, it was an exhausting but really wonderful experience on a personal level. I really feel I grew as an individual and my love of learning was reignited. So thank you to all involved.

The Irish Forest School Association (IFSA) was founded in 2016 and is engaged in the promotion and development of the Forest School (FS) movement in Ireland. We bring Forest School practitioners together to inspire inclusive, playful learning for all, in nature. We want to build resilience and relationships, through our connection with each other, and the natural world, while inspiring creativity and supporting wellbeing. More information can be found on our website www.irishforestschoolassociation.ie.

This final blog post is from Joan Whelan, the Chairperson of the Irish Forest School Association. She reflects on the opportunities within Forest School for adults to reaffirm their own creativity in their approach to teaching, drawing on her experience of introducing Forest School to the primary school where she was principal and on her current PhD research on the distinctiveness of Forest School as a pedagogical approach.

“Lie down, lie down, that way is best” – Blog 4

Participating in a Forest School (FS) session recently with a group of senior infants, I had one of those ‘light-bulb’ moments that happen every now and again and give pause for thought. Our eyes had been drawn towards the tree canopy by the fleeting sight of a grey squirrel bounding up the trunk of a scots pine.

‘Lie down, lie down,’ urged one of the children in a commanding but quiet voice. ‘That way is best’.

And we did. We lay down. Three 6-year olds and myself, flat out on the damp slightly muddy floor of a small and not very loved corner of woodland in Dublin city. And there was quiet, as we searched the tree canopy for the elusive squirrel, for perhaps a minute. Later that same day, having made charcoals from the leftover embers of the fire, a child asked to finger paint stripes on my face…and I had no hesitation. The experience remained with me.
I realised that in 36 years of teaching, I had never fully encountered this kind of immersive, embodied, child-initiated experience that felt very powerful and right. And I thought myself progressive and innovative as a teacher. What made this possible? Was it being in nature? Was it being suitably attired? Was it the small group? Was it the opportunities for child-led activity? Was it the leadership of the FS leader? Was it the safety that the session provided to explore and to ‘be’? Was it all of these?

It seems to me that a very profound opportunity exists for adults to reflect on their practice through participation in FS. We cannot promote creativity in children without being open to making new connections for meaning as adults. FS gives us permission to take a step aside, unlocking a more playful approach to learning which in turn promotes curiosity, exploration and innovative cross curricular connections that surely comprise the possibility for deep and creative connection and meaning making across the curriculum. FS seems to enable us to move from being teachers and pupils to being learners together.

In the context of the Arts in Education, FS provides a foundational, cross curricular pedagogical approach. The woodland provides the tools to enable risks to be taken safely, curiosity to be satisfied and boundaries to be tested. The transformative nature of this kind of learning for wellbeing, creativity and innovation is not easily accessible elsewhere in formal learning contexts. In an era of increasing focus on outcomes, rather than process, FS can help re-position children and adults, not the curriculum, at the core of deeper learning in the primary school. FS pedagogy can help to promote a deeper understanding of the relationship between the human world and the natural world, a theoretical thread that can be traced back to Rousseau, who regarded a connection to nature as fundamental to optimal human functioning. However, FS must be approached within a theory of change perspective. In other words, the importance of school communities articulating a vision for their pedagogical approach, based on their educational purpose, is non-negotiable.

And when was the last time you placed your hands in wet mud?

“We Are Mirrors” – Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder

A Conversation with Visual Artist, Kathryn Maguire

Visual Thinking Strategies is a research based method, founded on the doctoral work of Abigail Housen(Co-Founder of VTS) and her research on aesthetic development. Housen’s research focused on the question – ‘What Happens Cognitively When You Look at a Work of Art?’ Her methodologydevised an ‘Aesthetic Development Interview’ to understand how a spectrum of differentviewers understand and interpret the same artwork. With this data,and drawing on constructivist learning theories, in particular Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget, she designed a stage theoryfor aesthetic development. Her stage theory tracked common features of five stages. According to Housen, each stage is inherently important. No stage can be rushed or bypassed. Growth occurs with repeated and regular exposure to viewing art. In her collaboration with Philip Yenawine and MOMA, New York, Housen’sresearch identified that the majority of visitors attending the museum and its programmes were stage 1 & 2 viewers. Stage 1 & 2 viewersjudge an artwork is based on what they know and like, their observations may appear idiosyncratic and imaginative, and they have their own sense of what is realistic and this standard is often applied to determine value. Stage 1&2, as aesthetic learners, are storytellers. Storytelling is a universal means of making meaning. Meaning making requires critical thinking, personal reflection, the consideration of multiple possibilities, communication and respectful debate.

Part of the challenge for me was unlearning earlier teaching practices. I had to…learn a new paradigm, one that put people ahead of art, one that focused on enabling not just engaging people. I had to step back from what I thought people should learn, to create a teaching/learning method that would help them realize their full potential at any given moment. – Philip Yenawine

Professional visual artists, that have trained in Visual Thinking Strategies with us, tell us that VTS can offer them a useful framework to critically appraise their own artwork in development. It is a tool that can inform their understanding of a diversity of interpretations that audiences will bring to the artwork. This can be a valuable input into an artwork’s development before it arrives into the gallery or public space. Visual artists that have trained with us, and been implementing VTS as part of their practice, specifically in schools, report that the neutrality and rigour of the VTS method is their biggest challenge. For me, this is completely understandable. When you love art and have dedicated your life to its study and practice, you want to share all your knowledge and skills with your audience. The visual artists we work with are very generous and committed to sharing with their audiences. However, the time and appropriate support to do this is usually very limited.

Within schools, there may only be one shot – the one class visit to a gallery in a year. Or a school or artist might get support for a suite of sessions or a medium-term residency. Following Housen’s theory, we can propose that more consistent and supported time for art and artists to work with students allows greater opportunity for embedding aesthetic growth and learning. In addition to the time limitation, there are very few training opportunities for artists in understanding pedagogy, curriculum and developmental stages of children and young people according to age, ability and cultural tradition. Therefore, the skill of facilitating meaning making with visual art and children and young people, for many artists, is based on their own process of discovery and how discovery emerges in their practice.

Kathryn Maguire’s practice is inspired by science, history and the social world. She works in the field of socially engaged art, therefore, contrary to making an artwork in isolation, she develops artwork with a community in a way that honours both her areas of inspiration and a community’s vested interest in their neighbourhood. Kathryn has effective collaboration skills that allow space for experts and knowledge from varied backgrounds and sources to inform the development of her work. She is a sculptor, and in particular, specialises in social sculpture. She uses mirrors regularly in her work and understands the value of using mirrors as a reflective tool, that can work equally well in the gallery/museum and also outside, in nature. An example of this is Kathryn’s artwork is ‘Us’ Again – a floating mirrored shed, created in 2013, in collaboration with the Men’s Shed Group based in Rialto’s St Andrew’s Community Centre as part of Maguire’s residency at 468, Common Ground.

Image of ‘Us’ Again -Kathryn Maguire

The shed, made completely of mirrors, journeyed along the Grand Canal, Dublin, to celebrate the impact the waterway has had on labour and leisure in Rialto and as demonstration and reflection on community and commonality. Kathryn’s mirrored shed informs her practice today, as she continues to investigate what is the common between us and our environment.

What do you find VTS brings to your practice as an artist?

As an artist, I feel like an investigative journalist in some ways. I gather knowledge and information and transfer it into an artwork. VTS is a powerful tool for me, as a learner. I’m constantly learning so VTS allows for my knowledge to be fluid. It is really important to me, in my life, and as an artist, that there is more than one answer. Facilitating VTS allows me time to listen to the different ideas coming from each person, to stay neutral, and not buy into one opinion or another. It is really important to stay listening to all the different facets of the conversation. We all come with so much ancestral knowledge. Perhaps allowing time and space for different perspectives, hopefully we can find our way to some common ground. This is what ultimately keeps me motivated – the search for our commonality. It’s why I still work with mirrors – we are mirrors. As an artist, I feel now is an important time. Artists have an incredible opportunity to look more closely, then take that knowledge and make it into an artwork and then take that artwork and go to the audience – it’s a gentle, fluid, domino effect.

What have you noticed happening in your work with schools and galleries in VTS image discussions?

I am currently Artist in Residence with Rathfarnham Educate Together National School (RETNS). I recently did a VTS facilitated discussion the school’s 5th class children at The LAB Gallery and Anita Groener’s incredible exhibition ‘The Past is a Foreign Country’. I observed that the children were highly environmentally aware and were able to articulate very clearly their understanding that if our environment is not harmonious, then that is not good for us either. They mirrored, for me, my own thinking that we are all part of the same ecosystem. This is an emotionally charged exhibition, exploring migration and the migrant crisis in Syria. I didn’t have to tell the children what the work was about. I didn’t have to give them a script. The script was inside them already. It just needed a gentle prise open. VTS allowed us time, and slowing down, deep looking, being comfortable in the silence. There is so much chatter, phone or screen time in our lives that just listening and communicating with each other is an amazing thing. This amazing thing happens when we communicate in a VTS session and I’m still not sure what the ‘thing’ is. This ‘thing’ is what Permission to Wonder has given to me as a person and as an artist.

Can you recall a favourite VTS Image Discussion?

I have been testing the VTS Image Curriculum and the Permission to Wonder images for the project image bank. I have been practicing VTS with test images in Scoil Mhuire, Marino and St Vincents BNS.

Some feedback on the VTS sessions with Kathryn from the 3rd class boys of Scoil Mhuire, Marino, gathered from teacher, Jennifer Gormley

‘It was very enjoyable and I liked that it wasn’t just based on one artist. I liked the way we got asked to say what we thought of the picture.’

‘It was really nice and I liked the way it was arranged, like the questions we were asked.’

‘It was really fun. I liked looking at the pictures and telling what I thought of them.’

‘I thought the paintings were really good and it was fun answering questions.’

Out of this image testing I find that Remedios Varo ‘Creation of the Birds’ 1957 gets a very powerful response, no matter what the age and stage.

Another memorable experience was a Wonder Club session with a Patrick Scott artwork in The Hugh Lane Gallery. The discussion went from a very religious metaphorical discussion into a more polarised religious and political debate. This was surprising as the beautiful abstract painting was a vehicle for adults to vocalise knowledge, and equally prejudices, that the group and I had to negotiate. Perhaps most valuable with adults, you get to access people’s wealth of knowledge due to their lived life.

** Wonder Club is monthly VTS sessions for adults that take place in Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane and The LAB Gallery

How did Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder support you to develop your VTS practice?

I would describe VTS practice like muscle that needs to be exercised. In Permission to Wonder, the trust within the group of educators, and the care within the partner group was really special. There was a silent strength in this support that was very nurturing for me to help me push me out of my comfort zone and become more confident in how I facilitate a VTS session. The logistical supports that were put in place for me were really important. Financial access to the training in Europe and then also being supported to practice at home in the schools and galleries allowed me to build this confidence. On foot of it, opportunities for me to work with galleries and schools have been increasing. In the past year, I’ve been really lucky to work with The LAB Gallery, The Hugh Lane Gallery, IMMA, The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny and all have been very supportive of me using VTS as a strand of my sessions with school groups. I use VTS at the beginning of my sessions almost as a way to bring students into a space where they will absorb the artists’ intentions by osmosis and then the session will evolve from there. I usually do a VTS session, followed by an observational drawing, followed by more formal object making in the education room. I find that the students, when they are sketching after the VTS image discussion, are not copying each other, they are more confident in how their own ideas are coming out of the artwork.

What would you like to work on next in your VTS practice?

The most important thing that I feel I need to work with most is staying neutral. I think that art can bring up a lot of stuff for people, very strong opinions are aired, a lot of debate and also emotional responses. I have to be careful to manage my own assumptions about why somebody might make a particular remark. I have to remember, that it’s okay if a group member does not want to contribute or may pull back or be quiet in the discussion. The strength of the silence may indicate that there may be a reason why somebody remains silent, something may be triggered for that person within the image or the discussion. There is learning in discomfort, but also learning to keep in mind safety and care for the group, and also keep in mind self care for me. I will always talk to a teacher at the outset of a session to find out if I need to be mindful of a member of a group. It’s that communication that needs to happen between us as educators – between teacher and artist – in order that the viewer is allowed to be silent or to be heard, depending on their need.

I would envision that I would like to push my VTS practice further. To move my VTS facilitation outside of art, into other areas such as science, history, mathematics. That I can move it out of the artworld and into other areas of education. I think VTS sits in the artworld but also has the flexibility and ability to move beyond the artworld.

Reflecting on the first year of Creative Schools

Alongside the workshops that we held during May and June, the Creative Schools Teacher committee had come up with a Menu of Activities to accompany the workshops. The Children’s Panel also came together to add their suggestions for the Menu. This Menu was designed to be a list of easy classroom activities that the teachers could engage in at times and days of their choosing, to compliment activities that they may have been thinking of doing anyway. All of the activities were based on our theme of Food, Cooking and Nature. Some of the activities included links to Food Science websites; inviting parents into classroom to engage in cooking activities; ideas for nature based art; healthy shared lunches and forest and beach picnics. A copy of this Menu was delivered to each classroom for a four week period and all teachers were encouraged to engage with the programme.

During the last week of term, we invited our children’s panel to come and give us some feedback on the programme and how it was for them. Yvonne laid out big sheets of paper and had specific questions to provide information she was looking for. This proved a very fruitful if not a humbling experience. Each classroom and each class level had experienced varying levels of engagement with the programme, depending on each classes packed schedule. Therefore, the children all had varying feedback. As we all know children to be, the feedback was honest, and some of it wasn’t all that flattering!

As a whole jigsaw piece, the Creative Schools programme was successful in its aims and objectives for this year. But when you break the jigsaw into individual pieces, it didn’t feel that that success had filtered down to all of the children in all of the classes. This was disappointing for both myself and Yvonne, as there had been a huge investment in the programme all year. It’s all about the children at the end of the day, and if the children didn’t benefit, well then there were questions to be asked. Myself and Yvonne had a good chat about it all, and agreed that if we had decided to focus in on one class grouping for example, and showered all of our Creative Schools programme on just those children then undoubtedly the feedback may have been different, but that is not what we chose to do. Instead, we needed to focus on the whole completed jigsaw, celebrate the success and look ahead to how we can build on it next year.

We intend our focus next year to switch to teachers professional development in creative practices. We see a great opportunity next year to spend our time researching cross curricular creative practices, as we feel that in order for maximum children to benefit from the Creative Schools Programme, we need to up skill our own practices and thus all children will benefit. We feel very excited about this new aspect to the programme and we are looking forward to continuing this creative journey next year

Ciara Gallagher Profile Pic

Ciara has a PhD in English from Maynooth University. She has worked as researcher on the National Collection of Children’s Books (TCD) and “Gender Identity: Child Readers and Library Collections” at the Centre for Children’s Literature and Culture, DCU. She has taught English in various universities and currently works at Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership as Administrative and Development Officer.

Blog 4 – On Practising Creativity and Change

The second half of the Creativity and Change course focused on “application to practice” – on applying the forms and modes of creative engagement we had experienced and worked with in the first half of the course. Over numerous weekends, we practiced creativity across a variety of forms. In small teams, we co-facilitated creative workshops to critically focus on important local and global justice issues with our peers. We created a 60 foot piece of street art – participating in the entire process from beginning to end. We planned and designed a number of creative street actions to engage the public in Cork city in support of Climate Case Ireland.

A core part of the Creativity and Change course is its focus on connecting learning that occurs through the head, hand, and heart – through reflection and critical thinking, through doing, making and taking action, and through affective learning and creating connections. Each weekend, each activity, actively engaged all three modes of learning. Not only did we practice the application of creativity and creative processes to encourage a critical reflection and action to change on global justice issues, we also built a community, a collective, however temporary, within which these experiences became all the more meaningful.

This head, hand, and heart model is not just something to apply to just certain learning experiences, but something that can inform so many areas of our lives, our learning, our teaching, our living. This too, like creativity, is something to practice each day and to continually build on.

Now, perhaps more than ever, it seems like the time to take action in our world, to resist retreating into apathy. The scale and persistence of the global justice issues that we face can make taking action seem like an impossible task. What the Creativity and Change course encourages is a sense that this continually coming back to these issues need not feel futile, or as evidence that things do not change despite our best efforts. That instead, circling back to social justice issues in new, creative, and diverse ways, is also something to live, and to make part of our lives.

Yvonne

Blog 4 – Reflect and Refine

My first year working as a Creative Associate on the Creative Schools Programme with my three allocated schools has ended. Nothing feels finished however; it feels as if we are just starting. While creative activities took place in each school as a direct result of the consultation process, I view this years work as research and development and I won’t be surprised if year two feels like more R&D. The consultation process in each case was very thorough and the conversations with the coordinators and, less frequent but equally important, with management, were robust and wide-reaching. Through evaluation with a selection of children from each school, for the most part, they report having both enjoyed and learned from their participation in the programme so far.

In my mind, the role of the Creative Associate is to assist in embedding creative approaches to teaching and learning (one could say to thinking and being) within the school environment. Reflecting on this, it would be easy to be disappointed with the years work, it falls far short of achieving that aim. There were small disappointments; not all teachers participated in the organised activities, not all children made the connection between the opinions they put forward in the consultation process and the resulting activities that they participated in, some of the planned activities didn’t materialise, some people didn’t enjoy the activities. There were larger logistical issues at play too; the late commencement of the programme combined with the lengthy intensive consultation process meant that most activities took place at the very time of year when schools are most busy. This had the most impact at G.E.T.N.S. where we developed and implemented an ambitious whole school programme of activities in May and June. The whole school cohesiveness we needed to realise the holistic nature of this programme got lost in the end of year ether. I choose to reflect on all of this as learning.

My three schools and I are building relationships together, we are reaching levels of understanding, finding out what works and what doesn’t in each setting. We are journeying. As a result of this long-term attitude and shared vision for trying to go a level deeper into creativity within the school environment, we have clear pointers for 2019/20. A large part of our work together will be investing in creative professional development for teachers. This would appear to be the most necessary and sustainable use of our time together. Our main challenges will be freeing up staff time and reaching beyond the arts curriculum. G.E.T.N.S. will engage in a Per Cent for Art project that will hopefully build, in a very exciting way, on our work together this year; the boys at Athenry are leading us toward a programme around creative play and the outdoor environment; Eglish are going to further their digital skills acquisition. The process is creative and child-led and this makes sense to me.

Learning from the power of place – Blog 3

“I walk because it confers- or restores- a feeling of placeness …I walk because, somehow, it’s like reading …”

― Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London

Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin wrote a while ago about the modern man, who walked the city in order to explore its history, the architecture, the changing environment.

That idea of exploring and thinking is about making sense of things, the places and people we encounter, and this approach can also be applied to adolescence children in their world, by interacting, investigating, questioning, and forming, testing and refining their ideas.

Place-based education promotes learning that is rooted in what is local— the unique local history, environment, economy, culture, landscapes, and architecture of a particular place – in mapping the students’ own “place” or immediate schoolyard, neighborhood, town or community. And walking is like mapping with your feet. It can promote a place-specific, sustainable approach to living, working and playing for all.

Following an introduction to the IAF Architects in Schools Programme to the TY students at St. Raphael’s College, Loughrea we started by asking the students a little about the town, the whereabouts of where they live and by what means had they travelled to the school that day. I wanted to find out about their lived experience and connection to the place. From this informal survey it soon became clear that the majority lived in either peripheralhousing estates or ribbon development on the towns fringes – the exception a few living on farm settlements in the environs of the county side. Not one it seemed lived within the town itself. I suggested walking the town together would allow us to stop – take a detour – and explore the form of that built environment.

Finding a historic street map from the local library and placing a glass, rim down, onto the map, we drew round its edge. We then instructed the students to pick up the map, go out into the town, and walk the circle, and keeping as close as they can to the curve, record their observations. This also helped them to get an idea of where we were in the context of the place. Loughrea town is compact and so in short, the walk would show us all the key places in the town, and help us see some hidden gems in the process. By walking – not only do you get great exercise – you won’t miss details and you’re much more likely to go in different buildings, squeeze down alleyways, etc.

Loughrea lies at a number of boundaries, both historic and geographic and its pattern and form of development has been shaped by these features at the various stages of its development. The lake and medieval moate are wonderful but one could easily pass through Loughrea without noticing either. Its existing street plan closely follows that of a medieval layout. Many tall narrow properties on either side of the Main Street occupy burgage plots laid out in the 13th century.

The Temperance Hall / Barracks road complex is a palimpsest in which the layered history of Loughrea is revealed. Signs of the walled town, the original Gate House and successive military occupations are evident at even a quick glance. Behind the Temperance Hall, built c1780s as a Cavalry Barracks, we found a complex of buildings enclosed by fragments of a defensive wall. The site backed up to the lake with picturesque views out to the crannogs and surrounding landscape beyond. Student research later revealed the arrangement had once also included a hospital, infirmary and forge. Part currently provides social, cultural and educational services for the people of the town. This was the chosen site for the student’s design project. One of the first tasks we set in carrying out the survey was to photograph and to draw these buildings.

The aim, to adapt the assembly of buildings and introduce / incorporate new housing typologies into it to form a new ‘piece of town’. One that faced the lake but which also utilized the existing network of lanes which connect back from here into the town proper. The project was somehow about revitalizing this forgotten space, repopulating it and in so doing, assist in remedying the vacancy seen in the adjacent streets at the town center.

Adopting this strategy, the workshops which followed were designed to place the student at the center of this process, and resulted in propositions for a new linear public park, a café on the crannog and a new mixed residential community. All this, a clear demonstration for the potential of architecture to enhance the experience of living and working in the 21st century Irish town, coming from the students themselves.

It goes to show that if we start with small steps …. to support novice viewers become more observant and more thoughtful about what they are looking at then this can empower them to present an alternative vision for their existing built environment. It is so vital that our towns are living vibrant places, of social and cultural exchange, community and interactions and so they must be constantly maintained as adaptive changing entities.

We see that legacy of bad planning in towns like Loughrea. It’s one symptomatic of the challenges facing many small communities in Ireland – contradictory forces in the commercial landscape due to changing consumer behavior patterns, with resultant accepted sprawl of housing leading to vehicular predominance, and the changing demographics – have pulled and shaped the town, and continue to do so resulting in increased vacancy at its core. In the context of climate change walkable and compact small towns have so much to offer us. The aim must be to shift the narrative from ‘conserving’ or ‘preserving’ small town settlements to ‘re-thinking’ and ‘championing’ them.

The students demonstrated an understanding of how these challenges faced by smaller communities can be overcome through sensitivity, creativity, collaboration and long-term stewardship. The projects demonstrate the possibilities of working in historic fabrics, re-connecting town centers to their surroundings and integrating a mix of uses into town centers. They arrived at a way of living which might suggest a more flexible approach to the town plot. It’s about creating a learning experiences that leverage the power of place. In fostering students’ connection to place, help their understanding of where they live and how taking action in their own backyards helps to take care of the world around them.

In full Swing

School days in May and especially June are incredibly busy. It always seems to creep up unexpectedly, but yet every year is the same! This business presented our biggest challenge when it came to implementing our Creative Schools programme. Starting up a creative programme for the whole school community at the same time and at this time of the year isn’t ideal. Myself and Yvonne had made a conscious decision that every single child would have access to the creative programme, and thus we spread it over 15 classrooms and over 400 children, rather than focusing in on a smaller cohert of children, and delivering a more comprehensive, focused programme. We decided this because we felt it was in line with our ethos of equality and inclusion and we didn’t want there to be a feeling that some children were accessing the creative schools programme when others were not. The reality of this decision was that we had to try hard to fit everything in to what was an already packed end of year schedule. There were successes, but undoubtedly there were also some disappointments.

The stand alone workshops were a great success. The infant classes had workshops with Down to Earth Forest schools, who demonstrated wonderfully creative ways to use our outdoor school environment to engage the children. First Class had workshops related to the importance of bees and pollination. Second Class went to visit an organic farm and brought back with them a box of organic vegetables that they cooked up creatively. Third Class designed nests for bees, and designed an outdoor area for sowing wildflower seeds. Fourth and Fifth classes visited woods near our schools and managed to forage over 15 different types of plants growing in our woods. Afterwards, they made some tinctures and elderflower cordial from their pickings. Sixth class had a workshop with Yvonne, discussing food production and the methods that Yvonne used to create her visual short film.

The workshops brought a great buzz to each class level and certainly opened the children’s minds to environmental issues as well as seeing how to creatively utilise the resources that we have easy access to in our immediate environment. Feedback for the workshops was universally positive from the children. We held a feedback meeting with the children’s creative committee and I will discuss the outcomes from this feedback meeting in the next blogpost.

Angie Kinsella of Nature Way (www.naturway.ie) is a passionate Forest School leader and sustainability teacher who have a firm belief in nature pedagogy. Angie feels that connecting with nature on an experiential level and encouraging learning in the outdoors is becoming ever more important in this increasingly digital age. Angie also works for Heritage in Schools.

Creative Experiences in a year at Forest School – Blog 3

Creative experiences this year at Forest School took on a slightly different feel for me and the children. I chose to fully immerse myself into celebrating and living with and through the Celtic calendar, also known as the Celtic Wheel. The Celtic calendar is focused on the cyclical change of seasons. Seasonal changes were very important to the Celts, who depended on the Wheel of the Year to dictate when to plough, sow, harvest, and rest. The turning of the Wheel represents the continuing birth, death and rebirth of nature. I felt the integration of this ancient way of being was appropriate for how I wanted to work in Forest School this year. I felt it was a helpful tool to inspire us to re-member, re-claim and re-weave our ancient heritage and what better place to share this than within the holding of the forest.

September was the return to school for children and also the month where we begin a new cycle around the Celtic Wheel. I started a long-term Forest School programme in the West of Ireland at the beginning of September. The first few weeks we entered into the woods and the children started to get to know the lay of the land. The forest floor still had plenty of flora present and the trees were full of leaves. The days were mostly warm and bright which helps, I feel, on many levels for myself, the children and their teachers.

I was met with a huge diversity of cultures within this group of children, which was such a delight; to witness the universal language of play that softly unfolds in a natural setting with the support of the Forest School principles. I witnessed children whose language skills may have been a challenge in a classroom setting blossoming in this environment. Some of these children had never been to a forest although it was only 10 minutes away from their school.

One girl joined us each week in her wheelchair with the incredible support and encouragement of her school teachers who were determined to make Forest School all-inclusive.

She would often spend time with other students crafting, or sometimes just take time out to relax in the hammock. There was always allocated time for free play. To climb trees, build forts, whittle sticks, or simple take time to be in the forest, alone or in groups, to relax in the hammock, to enjoy the canopy of the trees.

As we moved into October, I began to share and explore through fireside stories and crafts the meaning of Samhain, more commonly known as Halloween. I shared with the children how on this land we once celebrated ‘New Year’ at this time, how we honoured our ancestors, and how it was time to prepare ourselves for the winter ahead.

We made incredible sand helters stick skeletons. We whittled wands and swords and bows and arrows. We developed our fire lighting skills. We learned about wild foods and how to prepare wild foraged teas and cook feasts on the fire. We also explored how the fauna and flora of the land are preparing themselves and responding to the changing seasons. We crafted hapa zome (eco plant printing) with autumn berries, an explosion of colour. We also made nature journals so we could take note of the changes in the woods through drawing and words.

Each week that we met I asked the children to keep a close eye out and to feel the changes they noticed. As the leaves started to change colour on the trees and drop, I could certainly sense Nature starting to drop back into the underground. As the months passed and the darkness grew, I observed a shift in all our energy.

And then through Spring and now as the wheel continues through this time of blossom where we come close to Summer solstice. I feel the calling to play more energetic games and crafts that weave in the summer flora and fauna. I have learnt and continue to grow through this creative journey in the forest, in rhythm with the Celtic Wheel.

I recently received this feedback from a teacher who attended some of these sessions with her class. “The children grew mentally, physically and emotionally. They laughed and cried and sang and screeched and splashed and pushed themselves and explored and shared and learned so much about themselves and each other.” I feel this is a wonderful summary of our time in Forest School and the possibility it offers for creative expression for children, and for adults.

Blog 3 – Meaningful Actions

At this stage in the process, my role as Creative Associate on the Creative Schools programme is one of support. Here is an outline of the activities underway at each school and the decisions that informed them.

The boys at Athenry N.S. voted for the medium of construction and vocalised a desire for greater creative autonomy within activities. Staff voted to explore environmental arts and expressed an interest in professional development around the arts curriculum and cross-curriculum creativity. Both commented on the need for greater cohesion across the school community. Tom Meskell led a willow project, involving the whole school in a large-scale collaboration, with additional CPD for staff. Creative sustainability is encapsulated within the experiential process; the school sees that a whole-school project is possible and how it might work, the staff undertake a tailored exploration of creative collaboration with cross-curricular linkage, the children collectively shape a participatory experience that brings them together as a creative community, and everyone learns a new skill. The resulting work was celebrated with a magical installation at the school for Cruinniú na nÓg. 150 native tress were also planted on the school grounds.

Everyone at Eglish N.S. voted for up-skilling in Digital Media, specifically film and animation. The school has a very creative approach to curricular delivery, but the staff wished to expand on the creative confidence of everyone at the school toward greater self-expression. Again, the children vocalised a need for more creative autonomy and decision-making. Louise Manifold has been engaging the whole school in an exploratory journey of what creativity looks like, using accessible software such as green-screen and stop-motion on the school’s i-pads, and incorporating the children’s interests in movement, performance and nature. Staff are participating in customised professional development sessions that compliment the work with the children. The aspiration is to create a digital ‘guide to creativity’ informed by the children for children, which will be shared with families and peers and used by the school into the future.

Forest School Workshop by Down to Earth at Galway Educate Together National School

A programme of activities around food and nature, considering sustainability, regeneration and wellbeing, and involving talks, events, workshops and screenings, is in flow at Galway Educate Together N.S. The children voted overwhelmingly for cooking; a category that a voluntary children’s panel added to my long list of creative media. The staff showed a preference for nature-based activities. There was a shared desire to interact with external partners and off-site activities and an overall ambition to recognise, celebrate and communicate creative activities within the school and across the school community. The fifteen classes are each engaging in specialised workshops and choosing from an additional menu of activities around the expanded theme. Examples include foraging, farm walks, herbal tincture making, pollinator workshops, documentary screenings, wildflower sewing and forest school activities. The consultation process and this devised programme are also providing valuable research for an upcoming Per Cent for Art project for the school.

Stepping Back – Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder in a Post Primary School Art Room

A conversation with Anne Moylan, Art Teacher, Hartstown Community School, Clonsilla, Dubln15.

My experience with VTS has taught me that supporting authentic VTS practice, for our educators, our students, and myself is not a linear process. It thrives on a spirit of collaboration, time, and some resources to access training and share understandings of the method.

In 2016, Dublin City Arts Office piloted a partnership approach with the NCCA to test the VTS training pathway with a group of Irish educators from different backgrounds – professional educators who are from early years settings; primary school classroom teachers; secondary school (art) teachers; art educators (freelance museum and gallery educators, including teaching artists). It supported professional educators to train in Visual Thinking Strategies via Beginners and Advanced Practicums, with VTS/USA Programme Director, Yoon Kang O’Higgins. Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder extended this approach to six European partners, allowing us to deepen our understanding of the educators’ VTS practice journey through a research evaluation framework led by our partners, VTS Nederland. The intended impact is that, through supporting educators, children and young people will have access to opportunities for critical thinking & thoughtful citizenship; will be actively encouraged to trust their own perceptions and be open to the thoughts of others; will feel their observations are valued and valuable when dealing with visual expression.

Change has been apace in secondary school curriculum re-design in Ireland in recent years. The ‘new’ Junior Cycle places an emphasis on students’ holistic development, linking subject areas, and turning a titanic history of ‘information giving’ towards scaffolding students’ life skills to equip them for a rapidly changing technological and global world. This is a welcome change, and long awaited by us in the field that bridges arts, education and learning. It also invites challenging questions. I wonder what really happens in the classroom when we ‘step back’ and support our students to take the lead? In my conversation with Anne Moylan, a secondary school art teacher, and educator participating in Permission to Wonder, we discuss how her training in VTS has supported a shift in her teaching practice and heightened her awareness of the value of “stepping-back” for her students.

How does VTS inform your teaching practice?

For me, the method is very much about stepping back. It has definitely simplified down the process of looking at a painting, an object, a sculpture, piece of assemblage, for the first time. To ask the question – what is going on in this work? – and then to actually hear what the students can see and what they are thinking about it. You always come with your own knowledge but in a VTS image discussion you have to step back out of that. It is about allowing them to take you on any sort of a journey with their observations.

It is surprising when they point out something that you haven’t thought about or know already. You have to be prepared to go with the flow and therefore, your role completely changes with your students. You can make connections, bridge comments and themes, always developing the journey of their observation of the artwork. At the beginning, I found this difficult. Sometimes, as teenagers, you will find they are quiet or are afraid they are going to make a mistake. That really gets easier with experience and practice as the students get used to the process over time.

We are not looking at images on the art history course. These are images from the VTS/USA website or the Permission to Wonder project, chosen specifically for use in a VTS image discussion. They are images that I am not familiar with myself. So, I am out of my comfort zone. I find this invigorating.

*Permission to Wonder partners are building and testing a European based image bank specifically for use within the project by the educators. This will be available shortly on the project website www.permissiontowonder.com. Other images we have practiced with are drawn from the VTS/USA image curriculum for specific age groups available on https://vtshome.org/

What have you noticed happening for your students in a VTS image discussion?

Often, in a VTS session, you will find that students, who are very quiet usually, will begin to have a lot to say about a work. Some of these students would never talk, even in a practical art class. Then you show them an image, something will strike them in that image, and they really want to let you know what they see in it.

I have a number of students whose first language is not English. They have difficulty trying to say what they are looking at in their second language. Yet VTS gives them the space to do this. The atmosphere is very calm. That is the shift for me. Instead of giving them facts, dates and information about artwork, you are waiting to find out what they want to say about it, first and foremost.

With VTS, you really are connecting with their world. VTS allows the space for their world to connect with an artwork and indeed with me, as somebody from a different generation. You just see into their minds. Therefore, you could show them an image and the theme of mental health or family issues might come through from them. Of course you have to be careful and manage the discussion, not to flinch or be surprised. You might be flummoxed by what might come out of them. So holding your neutrality, and keeping the space safe for students, is important. VTS training helps you learn to do this effectively. You sometimes think they might be talking about their own lives, and yet they are not, they are talking about an artwork.

Your role becomes very much the facilitator of the discussion. Often I would have students, saying to me ‘When can we do this again?

Have you practiced VTS with images that are on the art history course?

Yes, for example, with Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding. When you ask the first question – what is going on in this work?- you get “I know all about this, we studied this in religion / we studied this in history”. This is an image that is a little bit recognisable to them. They are able to share what they have been taught. However, when you manage the discussion with conditional paraphrasing and ‘What more can we find?’ it deepens their engagement with the work. Even though they think they know as much as there is to know about it, it refocuses their attention back on the image. It deepens their concentration and gets their eyes back on the key elements of the picture.

‘The Arnolfini Wedding’ by Jan Van Eyck
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait

As part of teaching art history, I take the opportunity to bring the students into galleries in Dublin. The guides tend to lead the tour with one voice- the guides voice. As an art teacher, I just want them to know you can walk into a gallery in any city, you do not have to pay, you can go in, see two pieces, and go back out again. With VTS and the three questions, it is a framework for them to use for looking at artwork, no matter where they are or what artwork they are looking at.

Can you recall a favourite VTS image discussion?

I have used VTS with all the year groups. However, I particularly remember a VTS discussion with a group of sixth years, at the end of the year, in May. We were finished the practical side of the preparation for the exam. With sixth years, you do not want to make anybody have to speak. It is fine if they don’t want to say anything. However, in this session, there was one boy from China. He had so much to say about a particular image. He related it back to his own country. It was a painting, with a bright yellow palette and all the children depicted had these red neckerchiefs. The Irish children read them as the scouts, or being members of a group, or a club. This boy went in a completely different direction. He described that this is what it is like in China, in school. He talked about his own experience. He spoke for a few minutes and got a round of applause from the other students. A girl in the group said to him ‘in all the years that you have been in the school, that is the most, I’ve ever heard you say’. So that is the kind of profound experience I remember coming from my VTS image discussions.

‘Mask Series No. 6’ by Zeng Fanzhi,
https://muse.union.edu/aah194-wi19/2019/01/30/zeng-fanzhi-mask-series-no-6/

How do you think VTS complements the Junior Cycle art curriculum?

In the new junior cycle art curriculum, student voice is very important. It means stepping back and letting the student do the work, lead their learning process. This does not mean that your job is easier. Within the structure of classroom-based assessment, a lot of reflecting, verbalizing and building the visual vocabulary for teachers and the students, is required. The change is that you are putting the ownership for their learning and describing their learning process back on the student. Therefore, you need to facilitate the classroom environment more in order to achieve that.

What we are all nervous about is that it this is difficult to assess. For students and parents it is difficult to understand this change in emphasis. I gave my students a VTS image discussion as a piece of homework to try out with their parents. They took the framework and used it to look at any artwork or any piece of visual information with their family. The students were surprised with their parent’s observations and the conversations about the art work at home. I use it with my own family and it works very well!

How did Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder help you develop your VTS practice?

I really value that I have been involved in Permission to Wonder. As an art teacher in a school, you might be the only art teacher. You could be on your own, in your creative world. You are so busy day to day with project work. It is amazing to step out of it with VTS and to have an opportunity to meet other educators-to look at artwork with them using a different format. It is really quite enlightening and refreshing. There are four of us educators from Dublin and we are all coming from completely different backgrounds – gallery, artist, primary school and secondary school. Being involved in our own Irish group was brilliant. We helped each other to explore our own context and look at theirs. I really enjoyed the collaboration and it was invigorating to explore art with others.

The training practicums were very well paced out. In the Beginners Practicum, you had the three questions. But you have to get them right, and in the right order, remember the exact wording, and that was tricky for me in the beginning. It was also a challenge to learn to paraphrase accurately. That requires a lot of skill. In the Advanced Practicum, I loved learning about linking and framing comments. How you, as facilitator, can connect comments and really build the learning in the group. I enjoyed the training and understand that it is also up to me to support my own practice and keep motivated in using VTS.

What would you like to work on next in your VTS practice?

I did a VTS session with a society and politics class. None of these students were art students. We looked at images I selected specifically looking at politics and society – race, childhood issues, gender etc. VTS worked so well in this class. Students had so much to say and the images stimulated insightful conversations. I am interested in how VTS could be used in other subject areas and how I might help other teachers integrate VTS into their subjects in our school.

Fiona Lawton Teacher Fiona Lawton has been teaching secondary students in Scoil Bernadette Special School for the last ten years. She graduated with a Masters in Drama and Theatre Studies in UCC in 1999. During that period Fiona has been involved in writing, directing, acting and producing plays around Cork. In 2005 she played the part of the Magistrate in the award winning film ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’. In 2008 Fiona returned to UCC to complete a Postgraduate Diploma in Guidance and Counselling and subsequently in 2013 completed the Higher Diploma in Primary Education with Hibernia College. In school Fiona teaches a variety of subjects but has a passion for drama. Each year she works with a group of LCA students to devise, produce and perform a play. Fiona strongly believes in the importance of educating through the arts where creativity and collaboration are central to the learning process.

Creative Schools: Celebration Time – Blog 4

As the end of the school year approaches we have been looking forward to celebrating all our creative work that we have engaged in throughout the year.
On the 31st May all students in Scoil Bernadette participated in our Creative Schools Celebration Day. All students arrived in the hall to participate in eight different creative stations in small groups. There was a doodle corner, a lego station, a dance station, jenga, hook a duck, incredibox and a card making station. Everyone got a chance to try out each station to create, dance and play! A lot of fun was had and we all enjoyed ourselves.

In the afternoon, we all assembled in the hall to see some creative performances. In our school this year, our first years participated in the Music Mash Up programme where they learned to play different instruments and sing in a band. Music Mash up provides access for young people of all abilities to music in a fun, relaxed and inclusive way. This project was facilitated by Eamonn Nash. For more information see musicmashup.ie/about. We were lucky to see two performances by this group.

Our next performance we saw a dance piece that a selection of students from throughout the school were involved in. These students have been attending dance workshops every Thursday in the school with dance artist Lisa Cahill. The dance piece was part of the international movement of Global Water Dances. More information can be found on the website globalwaterdances.org/It was clear that the students had put in a lot of work and practice into their performance and it was a pleasure to see them express themselves so creatively.

We then saw a dramatic re-enactment of Johnny Cash’s song ‘A Boy Named Sue’ by the LCA 2 class. The group devised and performed the piece themselves. The play was entertaining and funny and the audience really enjoyed it.

Our main focus this year as a Creative School was to offer students additional Visual Arts Workshops for students across the school. These workshops culminated in a friendship tree which is proudly displayed outside our school. Each student coloured and drew on a series of discs which formed part of this collaborative picture. To conclude our Celebration Day we watched a photo story which documented these workshops. We saw the process of the work which involved a lot of teamwork and collaboration. These workshops were facilitated by Rosaleen Moore and Ailbhe Barrett, and led by Mairead O’Callaghan of Crawford Supported Studios. For more information see crawford.cit.ie/supported-studio-project-with-gasp-and-c_ig-artists/.

All of the participating students received a certificate from the principal for their role in the Creative Schools project this year.

This year we have developed existing relationships and also we have made new links and friendships with a lot of artists and organisations outside of our school. We were privileged to have all the artists who have worked with our school this year as guests on our Celebration Day.

The Creative Schools Project has ended for this year but creativity continues in Scoil Bernadette. Towards the end of the June we will be running an X Factor Competition where all students will again be taking to the stage to sing and dance. We are looking forward already to next year when we can get planning for our next Creative School project. Students already have an abundance of ideas of what they would like to do. We are delighted that we took part in the Creative Schools project this year and are proud of our participation and achievements.

Getting the Show on the Road

This second part of the process, putting together a programme of events on our theme of Food, Cooking and Nature, is a really exciting and energising process. It felt like it took such a long time to get to the point of settling on a theme that reflected the needs and wants of the children, their parents, and school staff. There was so much to choose from, the net was very wide. When we finally settled on the theme, it was really exciting to be able to brainstorm and come up with ideas that would reflect the needs of the school community in a programme of activities.

Yvonne had been busy behind the scenes putting the feelers out and getting in touch with artists and professionals working in these circles. All of the professionals that Yvonne contacted were very enthusiastic about participating in the Creative Schools Programme and delighted to link in with our primary school in a sustainable way. We have now arranged for every class level to have a workshop/trip off site, which could only have been achieved as a result of the funding we received as part of this process. We are very grateful to have had access to this funding and it’s a wonderful asset to have for our second year programme as well. Through these workshops the children will be bug hunting, foraging in our local woods, making tinctures, becoming Bee Aware and making our school grounds pollinator friendly, visiting an Organic Farm and a workshop with Yvonne on some short films she made around the butter making process.

Our Creative Schools panel of teachers and children also brainstormed together and came up with a “Menu of Activities” (pardon the pun!) that every classroom can engage with over the next few weeks. These activities range from Science experiments with food items, setting classroom up as a restaurant and having a healthy shared lunch; inviting parents in to classroom to bake with the children or to share their skills, screenings of food related programmes and documentaries. We are hoping to document the activities that the children are engaging in over the next couple of weeks so that we can celebrate this creativity when we come back after the summer holidays. It’s going to be an action packed few weeks and we are looking forward to it immensely!

Lucy Elvis is a director of CURO, a not-for-profit organisation committed to public philosophy. CURO helps communities think together more effectively by inviting them to become Communities of Philosophical Inquiry. CURO works in schools, libraries, galleries and festivals as well as organising clubs and camps that include scholarship streams for children from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds. They like to get people thinking in places where they least expect it and to listen to the ‘big ideas’ that matter to groups who often aren’t given a voice.

When Lucy isn’t engaged in public philosophy, she is completing her PhD thesis and lecturing in Philosophy at NUI Galway. She is also an independent visual art curator and a board member of the TULCA Festival of Visual Art.

Talking about thinking and thinking about Talking – Blog 2

Sometimes, our young philosophers’ work can appear deceptively low tech. Walk in on a CPI (a community of philosophical inquiry) and you’ll find children sitting in a circle, some speaking, some listening and sometimes a cuddly toy, or a ball being used to indicate who should be talking. But, in these seemingly straight-forward talking shops, mind-bending ideas are explained, exchanged, and even worlds reimagined.

So far, so not-so-different from ‘circle time,’ right? However, there’s much more happening in philosophical dialogue than ‘talking.’ Unlike conversation, where I might share some news, and then hear from someone else, content in the CPI is anchored in a philosophical question (a ‘big’ ‘tricky’ ‘contestable’ and ‘open’ question) that the community have voted on together. In the CPI our learners are trying to solve ‘big problems’ together. This requires careful critical thinking before making a contribution. In answering big questions like ‘Should we always be punished for stealing?’ I have to decide my overall position (yes/no) and the reason why I think so.

If the only goal of a CPI were sharing opinions, then the result would be a straight-forward debate. But, undertaking philosophical inquiry together, means finding the best possible answer we can to our ‘big question’- a tally of yesses and nos won’t cut it. We will have to test the consequences of any overall position we adopt, and this might mean imagining scenarios, (‘what about stealing something small from your sister?) adjusting them, (‘what about stealing something back?) or clarifying what you mean by using analogies to point at similarities and differences (‘stealing something back is like creating fairness.’*)

The creativity described here needs critical thinking too, to support the new possibilities it imagines, and to create boundaries for creative thinking to ‘go-beyond.’ Because of the ways being critical and creative work together, the CPI allows our young learners to see how thinking from radically different areas of the curriculum work together, and how, scientific discovery and creative expression are both united by care and curiosity that powers our passion to ‘find out more.’

The CPI is a place for talking through, exploring and building possible answers together. Making thinking about concepts or big questions’ share-able’ can be a challenge, and demands creativity, and a rethinking of what ‘being creative’ can be, if we can move from just sharing ideas to making and revising them together.

*The examples here are based on a workshop with Ballyroan National School, at Ballyroan Library, who asked the question: ‘Should we be punished for stealing’ after they read ‘The Whopper’ by Rebecca Ashdowne together.

Setting the Scene for Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder

My first encounter with Visual Thinking Strategies was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in 2001. I was on a public tour of the collection and the guide stood us in front of an artwork by Jackson Pollock and said ‘What is going on in this picture?’. I was challenged by the question. I was also surprised by the long, silent pause that followed it! The group discussion began slowly. All opinions offered by the group were considered by the guide, validated and acknowledged as a valuable contribution to the meaning of the work. But in truth, I was disappointed that the guide did not offer any explanation about history of the artwork. Being a graduate of history of art, I had visited a lot of museums and always enjoyed the experience of being told information and stories about the artwork and the life of the artist. The Pollock work was figurative, with references to native American iconography. I wanted to be told the ‘right answer’ about its intended meaning.

Soon after, I began an internship with SFMOMA and discovered that the discussion-based approach used on public tours was called VTS – Visual Thinking Strategies. I began to think more about visual learning and constructivist pedagogy. I was introduced to the basics of VTS facilitation – three questions – what’s going on in this picture? – what do you see that makes you say that? – what more can we find? – backed up with carefully considered paraphrasing on the part of the facilitator. I then did a piece of action-research with a group of adult learners with literacy difficulties from San Francisco Public Library which deepened my understanding of the role of the art museum as an active learning space which could harness rich opportunities for literacy/language development.

Visual Thinking Strategies is a teaching framework and a practice. It was devised in the late 1980s by Philip Yenawine, art educator and Abigail Housen, cognitive psychologist. At the time, Yenawine was Director of Education at The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City and was primarily concerned with making museum education programmes more effective. Yenawine and Housen’s research found that most viewers participating in museum programmes (specifically MOMA’s education programmes) were novice viewers, meaning that they had little experience looking at art, and their interpretations were relatively naïve.

VTS is based on three questions that aim to support novice viewers become more observant and more thoughtful about what they are looking at. This approach seems deceptively simple. However, with regular practice and when implemented effectively with a group, by a trained VTS facilitator, the (educational) outcomes are strong. Participants learn to acknowledge that every idea is important as they concentrate on justifying their idea with physical elements present in the work they are observing. This improves observation skills and builds confidence in understanding works of art, giving participants a sense of ownership and empowerment over their opinions about art. VTS involves no art-historical information and it does not require that the VTS facilitator have the answers to questions that arise in the course of discussion. However, it does require educators to accept that they are not teaching aboutart. Rather they are facilitating critical debate and thinking about art and indeed the bigger themes that emerge from an artworks’ powerful mirroring of the world. I have learned from my own training with VTS/USA, that while VTS is a valuable method in my arts in education toolkit, my VTS practice requires consistency and reflection to genuinely support students’ thinking, learning and aesthetic growth.

While art museums are increasingly more open to audience centred approaches in mediating art, historically, this has not always been the case. French sociologist, Pierre Bordieu, went so far as to claim that the “true function” of the art museum was to “reinforce for some the feeling of belonging and for others the feeling of exclusion” and his research highlighted a public perception of art institutions as a type of holy shrine for artwork to be admired but not necessarily understood. [i] The opposite is the agenda for the durational work with VTS at Dublin City Council’s LAB Gallery. As a contemporary art space for experimentation and risk taking in the visual arts in Dublin, The LAB Gallery has played a critical role in giving professional development, time and space for contemporary art, educators and local children in Dublin 1 to collaborate in a shared investigation of VTS. Sheena Barrett, the LAB’s Curator, highlights the importance of VTS in providing a safe space to practice discussions that support our capacity to ‘wonder’ as opposed to moving too quickly to judgement about an artwork and/or complex social issue.

Fast forward to 2017, and Dublin City Council Arts Office is successful in achieving a European Union Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnership Project Funding for Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder.

Artist Claire Halpin, Art Teacher Kieran Gallagher & Liz Coman at the MACA Contemporary Art Museum Alicante

Artist Claire Halpin, Art Teacher Kieran Gallagher and Liz Coman at the MACA Contemporary Art Museum Alicante

Erasmus+ Permission to Wonder aims to widen the network of VTS peers through training and sharing learning. The project focuses on supporting ‘educators’ to develop a Visual Thinking Strategies practice over time. Over the course of this blog series, I hope to introduce you to the Irish educators who participated in Permission to Wonder. Kieran Gallagher is a secondary school art teacher based in St Oliver’s Community College, Drogheda and is a member of the visual arts Junior Cycle training team. Claire Halpin, is a professional artist and art educator and is the co-ordinator of the VTS Neighbourhood Schools Programme led by Central Model Senior School. Anne Moylan is a secondary school art teacher based in Hartstown Community College, Dublin 15. Jane Malone is a primary school teacher based in St Catherine’s National School, Donore Avenue, Dublin 8. Sile McNulty Goodwin is Education Curator at Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane. Kathryn Maguire is a professional artist and art educator.

Assistant Arts Officer Liz Coman, Teacher Anne Moylan, Education Curator Sile McNulty , Teacher Jane Malone and Artist Kathryn Maguire in the David Museum, Copenhagen

[i] As quoted in Stephen E. Weil, Esq, “On a New Foundation: The American Art Museum Reconceived,” in A Cabinet of Curiosities: Inquiries into Museums and Their Prospects (Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 106.

Blog 2 – Collate and Prioritise

I collected a lot of information from the schools I have been working with as part of my role as Creative Associate on the Creative Schools Programme; written notes, visuals, statistics, survey information. The biggest school (Galway Educate Together on Newcastle Road) has over 500 pupils and 50 staff. Regardless of the size of the school, everyone was asked for their opinions. This took time and investment from myself, the coordinators, staff, voluntary Children’s Creativity Panels and, at G.E.T.N.S., a voluntary Staff Creativity Panel. Questions were asked such as: What are the challenges to being creative in the classroom? What are the opportunities for this Creative Schools Programme? If you were the principle of this school and had money to spend, what creative things would you spend it on? Age-appropriate surveys were completed with in-depth questions regarding the level of engagement with creativity in the classroom, staff planning, allocation of funding, parental awareness of creative activities etc. There were votes, by all parties, in relation to areas of interest and creative media to explore. Everywhere I went I brought colored sharpies and hundreds of colored post-its, blue-tack and masking tape, large sheets of paper and visual aids. The workshops were active and inclusive and very enjoyable.

I then worked through the valuable information, stored on sheets and post-its or documented through photographs, in the same way that I would with research for any project; by laying it all out and finding the overlaps and patterns within it. I moved post-its around, joined them with arrows and written notes. Through this process of collating and prioritising (staff were involved to a certain extent during workshops), I produced a visual mind-map for each school. I returned to present the findings and discuss suggestions as to how we might address the prioritised information. My hope in each case was to find a way to marry the medium / media of choice with a methodology through which prioritised learning could be imparted and to also encompass the larger contexts, aims and ambitions, outlined by each school. Context, method, medium, not necessarily in that order, are the three strands that merge to inform and form my own artistic practice and individual projects and are the main elements of my teaching methodology.

There followed a consultative process involving staff, staff panels, children and children’s panels, through which my suggestions were padded and shaped collectively. In each case we made decisions on ‘projects’. These projects have a beginning, middle and end, however they are not stand-alone. Rather, they have been devised as a way to carry experiential learning on a number of levels and to keep this learning open so that it can be expanded upon. They have also been devised in collaboration with specific artists; the ‘who’ is as important as the ‘how’ and the ‘why’. In each case I approached particular people and engaged them in conversations, alone and then with the schools, to further shape what might happen. We are now at that wonderful point where the work is starting to unfold.

Frank is an Irish-born designer /cultural producer with an interest in film, architecture & the arts, design and technology. An honors graduate in Production Design for Film, TV and theatre, he spent the best part of a decade in this sector. Coming from a film and set design background, he has always been passionate about the power of buildings and spaces to tell stories and he developed this interest further when he later moved into interior and architectural design work setting up practice in London in 2001. This experience led to a decision to study architecture at London Metropolitan University where he was awarded an BA Honors’ Architecture in 2008 and a Professional Diploma in Architecture 2012.

His professional practice includes the design of buildings & set design for film and television production. This has informed his approach to practice, which is collaborative, interdisciplinary and site-specific. With a long term interest in the critical potential of design he established the Architecture at the Edge Festival in 2017, for which he devised and developed the events programme through all stages: planning, development and administration, including the curation and production of an annual symposium on Placemaking & associated workshops. He recently produced an outdoor built installation, ‘Ghost Chapel’ for Galway International Arts Festival 2018 in collaboration with Bartlett School of Architecture.

Cities Need Old Buildings – Blog 2

‘Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them…. for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.’

From; The Death and Life of Great American Cities , Jane Jacobs

In my last blog I described how we extended the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF) – Architects in Schools learning programme at The Bish into engagement beyond the school gate. Incorporating urban sketching on Nuns Island and other activities within the workshop itinerary in an attempt to encourage and allow the students an opportunity to examine their city from another perspective … to be creative. To be imaginative.

With the school located on part of the under-utilized parcel of land at the edge of Galway City center, the regeneration of Nuns Island lands need careful and detailed consideration it being directly between the City and NUI Galway it easily facilitates an expansion of the University campus or an expansion of the City creating a civic space to carefully bring both City and University together. NUI Galway and Galway City Council recently launched a public consultation for this very purpose. The aim here is to transform Nuns’ Island into a new quarter that will enable the city to capitalize on its creativity, enterprise and quality of life. The masterplan is being prepared by internationally-renowned planners BDP, business strategy advisors Colliers International and quantity surveyors AECOM. It is supported by the Government’s Urban Regeneration Development Fund. Focusing on this regeneration of Nuns Island we were delighted that Gareth McGuire, Architect Director BDP agreed to lead the students on a mapping exercise.

So we took a walk through their Island, mapping the existing spaces and their functions, recording the grain of the place and also seeking out opportunities for future interventions.

Amongst the key programmatic functions identified by the students in this process a number of themes evolved;

The adaptive reuse potential for abandoned or ‘forgotten ‘ spaces – such as vacant former industrial buildings now in ownership of the NUI Galway.
The Island as a Place of Sanctuary in the middle of the city – the Island being the location of the Cathedral, the former Bish School Monastery and Poor Clare Nuns Convent.
An Urban Garden – utilizing the natural elements at the island location i.e. the surrounding canal / river waterways and incorporating open green spaces such as the Fisheries Field.

Amongst these functions one of the activities identified by the students is the sight every July of the Big Blue Tent at Fisheries Field, erected for the duration of GIAF Arts Festival. It’s a signifier of the festival status which is core to the public life of the city and a landmark for the summer. We discussed with the students about this ‘creative arts entertainment’ intervention and the potential for other spaces on the island, such as the old derelict Persse’s Distillery Building for adaptive reuse purposes. What might those buildings and spaces become? Student accommodation? With the meeting of ‘Town and Gown’ perhaps a shared library building for the city would be useful? Or a new Distillery? A Contemporary Art Gallery? Co-working spaces to foster a creative community? The students could quite readily foresee that in the creative use of these spaces lies the key to regeneration for the entire masterplan.

GIAF Big Top

During the process I was reminded of a famous line from the late great urbanist Jane Jacobs: “New ideas must use old buildings.” So how to interpret and translate that into a way which might allow the students to engage directly in the process of reimaging Nuns Island?

Attending the Galway International Arts Festival 2019 programme launch last Thursday, the Artistic Director Paul Fahy, referred to the lack of cultural infrastructure in the city, reaffirming the festivals need to ‘Adapt old spaces and turn them into something new … ’he announced that as in previous years having utilized the former Connacht Tribune Printworks for the Festival Gallery, and this now being is no longer available, (again its being repurposed but now as an indoor food market), GIAF is out of necessity appropriating and re-adapting the old GPO Sorting Office for the Festival Gallery 2019. Situated just off William street this building is just one other city center site which has lain vacant and idle for many years. Out of sight and just screaming for rejuvenation!!

The GIAF festival have always been the cultural pioneers in this city whom out of necessity occupy overlooked and abandoned spaces and transform them into vibrant active places. They understood that a former printing works, or an GPO sorting office can accommodate exactly the kind of framework needed for a creative hub /district. Both examples demonstrate a pragmatic response, creating flexible public buildings that give scope for further development. That kind of loose-fit re-apportion of space does not dictate how it should be used, the potential for revival is already there in the infrastructure and Galway has the cultural riches to attract people in the first place. It’s a matter of turning it to the right purpose. To look at the seeming familiar from another perspective …

As Architects we are often challenged to respond to these kinds of circumstances by conceiving new ideas for the design or re-design of existing spaces. In this process architects can become both activist and educator, championing the cause and helping to galvanize the support of the local community.

This was the approach taken with the students at the Bish. Bringing the class out into the town to explore and experience spaces and familiar places on their door step. To invite them to contribute and make decisions on what buildings or spaces they would like to create in their own local area. You could sense the excitement among the student participants in engaging as stakeholders themselves in that process which shapes their environment, in opening up new ways of looking and engaging with the world, and just perhaps pathways to creative careers as master planners or cultural pioneers for a few.

IFSA Kerry Walker The Irish Forest School Association (IFSA) was founded in 2016 and is engaged in the promotion and development of the Forest School (FS) movement in Ireland. We bring Forest School practitioners together to inspire inclusive, playful learning for all, in nature. We want to build resilience and relationships, through our connection with each other, and the natural world, while inspiring creativity and supporting wellbeing. More information can be found on our website www.irishforestschoolassociation.ie.

In this second blog post, Kerry Walker talks about how the Forest School principles can be used to unlock creative potential in children (and adults!)

Kerry Walker is a passionate Forest School Practitioner and Art Therapist. Her appreciation for nature and art has brought her on creative journeys around the world. She has facilitated creative arts programmes with a focus on using art and nature as a tool for integration, connection and awareness. Kerry is the co-founder of Down to Earth Forest School, a nature based educational programme where children are supported to learn and create through nature. (www.downtoearthforestschool.com)

Unlocking Creativity through the Forest School Principles – Blog 2

The wider the range of possibilities we offer children, the more intense will be their motivations and the richer their experiences. – Loris Malaguzzi

The Irish Forest School Association follows six guiding principles set out by the Forest School Association in the UK in 2011. These principles form the foundation that gives the learner the freedom to choose how they approach challenges and activities in natural spaces. Forest School, based on these principles, creates a space to encourage and support us to think critically and creatively. I am going to look at each of the principles and highlight how they are key to unlocking and supporting the creative development of children, as well as promoting resilient and independent learners.

In short, Forest School:

takes place in a woodland setting
is a long term process of regular sessions
creates a community for learning and development
promotes holistic development
provides the opportunity to take risks
is run by qualified FS practitioners

By using a woodland setting for Forest School sessions, we are providing an open-ended natural environment for the children to explore. The Forest School setting is abundant with sticks, leaves, soil, stones, and many more natural objects. They are materials that can be carried, moved, combined and redesigned – they are what Simon Nicholson (1971) referred to as loose parts. He proposed that access to loose parts encourages children’s creativity and provides a greater range of opportunities (Nicholson, 1971).The woodland setting is also providing the learner with continuous access to the natural environment where they are able to immerse themselves in the creative stimulation that nature so freely provides.

Ensuring that Forest School is a long term process of regular sessions is an important factor. As the sessions are continuous, the children are given time to return to their woodland site on a weekly basis throughout the seasons. With this time, they are afforded the opportunity to work on a certain craft or skill at their pace, and develop and share their own ideas. They are not rushed or told to have a final product; they get to experience the process of creating something over time.

By using a range of learner-centred processes, Forest School aims to create a community for development and learning.It provides a platform for all learning preferences. Play and choice are an integral part of the Forest School learning process, and play is recognised as vital to learning and development at Forest School (FSA, 2011). Child-led play is central to Forest School and play facilitates a creative response in us all.

Promoting holistic development and opportunities for supported risk taking are considered central to Forest School and also to enhancing creativity. Forest School aims to develop, where appropriate, the physical, social, cognitive, linguistic, emotional, social and spiritual aspects of the learner (FSA, 2011). It encourages children to lead activities, it can help improve fine motor skills, promotes self-awareness and gives the child ownership of the sessions. Forest School encourages children to step out of their comfort zone. In doing so, the children are able to become more aware of their physical and mental limits and are more able to assess situations. They are supported to think creatively and to trust themselves.

Qualified FS Practitioners are aware of the importance of child-led activities and so they do not teach or tell children what to do. Instead they provide ideas, activities and resources and facilitate opportunities for children to pursue their interests. Over time this supports the children’s confidence and fosters creative thinking.

By providing children a long-term learning process within a woodland setting, while supporting risk and holistic development, and by creating a community for learning with a qualified practitioner the Forest School principles are key to unlocking and supporting creativity in children.

Gill, Tim, (2007) No Fear: growing up in a risk adverse society

Nicholson, Simon (1971) The Theory of Loose Parts, An Important Principle of Design and Methodology. Open University.

Creative Schools: An Exciting New Journey

Our school was delighted to hear about this new Creative Schools initiative and were eager for our school to participate. Our school has traditionally been very lucky to have creative teachers and parents who have shared their talents with the children over the years. Schools have changed dramatically over the years, the advent of technology means that the wider world has become much more accessible to children, and any amount of content is now available at the other end of their fingertips. The information presented on the training day for Creative Schools was so relevant and interesting. The notion that 65% of jobs our current cohort will be doing as adults have not yet been created blew my mind. That the World Economic Forum lists Creativity third in the top ten list of skills that our young people will need to navigate their future highlights how much skills development is now required in schools into the future.

We have been working in close collaboration with Yvonne Cullivan, our Creative Associate all year and this has been a great experience for our school. Yvonne has been successfully able to help us as a school identify the relationship we have with creativity through the eyes of the teachers, the children and the parents. What emerged out of that process was that as a school, we have a lot to celebrate, much to communicate and a great roadmap for how we can develop further as a school. There was a huge amount involved in the information gathering stage of the project, due in part to our large school population – surveying, collating and analysing over 1000 opinions was a long process. We were relieved to hear that there would be another year to engage with the project, as we felt that we would need a lot more time to embed the learning from the information gathering, and having another year next year will allow us to do that.

The outcomes for our school are that all members of the community wish to engage more with creativity and the arts, we wish to engage with each other and the wider community more, we wish to see more cross curricular creativity and we wish to communicate and celebrate the many wonderful aspects of creative work that we already engage in. The children voted to do more work around cooking, nature and horticulture, so myself, Yvonne and the other wonderful teachers on our Creative School committee are currently working to put together a programme to run over the course of May and June. I look forward to sharing how we are getting on in the next blog post!

Threshold – Blog 1

TY students from schools around the country completed their IAF Architects in Schools project this month with a presentation at GMIT’s Cluain Mhuire campus to IAF, GMIT staff and Architect Dermot Bannon. Devised and delivered by the Irish Architecture Foundation, this initiative provides students with first-hand experience of the design process under the guidance of design professionals.

This was my third year participating in the programme, and alongside architect Sybil Curley returning to my alma mater at St. Josephs College, ‘the Bish’, Galway we undertook to deliver a series of workshops which might allow the students to develop their visual spatial skills. Art is not taught as part of the curriculum at the school, so it was important that we find a way to allow the students the opportunity to express their inherent creativity. The teacher was keen for us to assist the students to work on design concept development that would prepare them for Design Communication and Graphics (DCG) subject challenges. To this aim, prompting visual research was very important as it helped the students investigate that process. Taking steps to intentionally address any lack of confidence in their own creativity the students surveyed areas of the school and recorded observations on materials, light levels, circulation etc. Critical thinking and visual awareness was encouraged throughout the course. Exploratory site visits further increased the students’ visual vocabulary and ability to convey design concepts through sketching.

In the first year we explored the idea of ‘Threshold’ in creating an aedicule, between the school institution and the city. There are plans to relocate the school away from Nuns Island and out of the city to a new site in the coming years so the idea was to think about designing a ‘gateway’ into the new institution. Starting with an exercise to create their own school motto to place above the entrance to the existing school building we brought the students out to sketch the Spanish Arch and other historical approach’s to the city. Following mapping exercises of the schools existing entrances and reception areas as well documenting the access roads/bridges onto the Island in which the school is located the students constructed a 1:100 physical model of the school upon which they could place designs of their own ‘aedicule’ interventions.

The following year we continued this exploration of that kind of creative flexibility which extended into how we can engage with the city beyond the school. Inspired by dePaor Architects refurbishment of Druid theatre, the students reimagined the adaptive reuse of their existing school building, turning it towards the river, and incorporating the adjacent Nuns Island Theatre into the schools buildings programme. Careful consideration was made to how best retain the character of this building, a former Methodist Church repurposed as an arts venue, and how this might give greater flexibility for improvements throughout the entire schools built infrastructure.

The design brief encouraged them to practice a culture of sustainability in our built environment through adaptive reuse of existing building stock located in and around the school’s current location at Nun’s Island. This initiative has the potential not only to encourage the students to better understand their built environment and gain skills in design, sketching, photography, model making & computer graphics. But also to encourage them to explore their local history & geography, engage in environmental studies, develop knowledge of material & construction studies as well as a practical use for ICT skills. The ability to spot problems and devise smart solutions—is being recast as a prized and teachable skill.

I find that these experiences have not only reinforced my belief in the importance and benefits to be found in ‘learning from making’ for a student’s development, but it has enabled them develop their own identity/interests, skills, sense of self confidence, and the possibilities for integrating this into all aspects of their learning process.

When we think about communicating something essential about the world be it through art/drama/storytelling etc. to young people in particular, it does not help to be didactic, to focus on technical or technological skill. I would encourage an emphasis on the enjoyment and the value of the process of making more than the result or final product. What is of benefit to the youth is found in the freedom, experimentation and exploration that went into their creation. Expect to make mistakes. There is no right way or wrong way. It is in finding solutions that make the value of creative imagination most valuable. My approach would be to get something across playfully. To equip students with valuable life tools which enhance their public speaking and communication skills, social development, emotional development as well as the cognitive benefits. Actually, to get playfulness itself across.

We thought we’d never ask…. – Blog 1

Often in our haste to increase engagement in arts education, we want to get children making. This is a liberating process: they meet makers, learn about their practice and have a go at creating work in that way these experiences are exciting, motivating and arguably help to create our future artists.

But, what about our future art audiences? Visual Thinking Strategies have dominated museum and gallery education programmes, and these have value too. They focus on looking slowly and carefully, getting lost in the work itself and wondering what it’s all about by answering the questions ‘What do you think is happening in the picture?’ and ‘Why?’

What happens though, when you allow young audiences to take charge? What new understanding can emerge by allowing them to frame the questions they are really wondering about after experiencing a play, roaming an exhibition, absorbing a story, watching a film or listening to some music?

This is what CURO aims to do when we think about art with our communities of young learners. Our focus is on reconnecting the experiences of art, with our experiences in and with the world using them to think deeply about questions that matter for everyone. So, where visual thinking strategies stay within the edges of the canvas and practice-oriented art interventions are focussed on making something, we encourage our communities to run with the work by devising a common, contestable and enduring question that it sparks for them.

In this process the group votes on one such question and enters into a structured dialogue to find a collective answer. Questions we’ve explored with communities include: ‘Is everyone creative?’ (inspired by the work of Sam Basu and Liz Murray), ‘Are there more than two genders?’ (sparked by Bassam Al Sabbah’s Walking, Walking with The Sun Upon my Back) and ‘Could we exist without negative emotions?’ (prompted by the experience of Richard Profit’s The Shortcut: Don’t Follow the Black Dog).

These fascinating questions are just the start of a process of exploring possible answers, the reasons for them and the imagined worlds where ‘that’s the case.’ In our next post, we’ll talk about the ‘how’ of structured dialogue and the creative thinking skills it can foster through the context of our work in Galway County Libraries.

MarieClaire (Claire) Murphy is a primary school teacher, forest school leader and a PhD researcher in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. Thanks to funding from the Heritage in Schools scheme, Claire is currently working collaboratively with a Forest School Leader to bring a high-quality learning experience to primary school children.

Exploring the Visual Arts Curriculum in Primary School the Forest School Way – Blog 1

We know that one in six Irish parents don’t think it’s safe for their five-year-old child to play outside at home during the day (Early Childhood Ireland 2019). So opportunities to explore and to be in natural environments are increasingly limited for young children. Forest School inspires learning through interactive games, activities, songs, stories, nature crafts, foraging and sensory nature meditations. The sensory exploration deepens the children’s connections to nature as a result igniting curiosity and questioning, a fantastic gateway to learning about nature.

Forest School occurs as a weekly session in the child’s standard preschool or primary school context. The primary aim of Forest School is the development of children’s self-esteem, self-confidence and independence skills. A second aim is to encourage children to appreciate, care for and respect the natural environment (Maynard 2007). Taking risks is also an important element of this approach. The learners engage in activities such as building shelters, cooking on camp fires and identifying plant and wildlife (Harris 2017). The focus is on the whole child and their experiences developing the child’s independence and self-esteem through their engagement with the natural environment (Murray and O’Brien 2005).

The Visual Arts Primary School Curriculum presents a range of activities for the child to perceive, explore, respond to and appreciate the visual world, this involves ‘looking with awareness and understanding of the visual elements and their interplay in the environment and in art works’ (NCCA 1999, p. 2). One of the general aims of the Arts in Education includes the development of the child’s awareness of, sensitivity too and enjoyment of visual, aural, tactile and spatial qualities in the environment (NCCA 1999, p.4).

I explored the Visual Arts ‘Construction’ strand through this Forest School approach in a small-scale study. This was conducted in a 1st Class in a large, urban, DEIS status school. Overall, I found that there was a positive response as the majority of children noted that they ‘liked’ the lessons. There was evidence that children were engaged in the learning process and they displayed a development of new vocabulary associated with Forest School. I observed enthusiasm and engagement in the visual arts making process. I also found some unanticipated results of the study; I tended to structure group work in the classroom, but I found that this occurred more naturally during the Forest School sessions. Children had space to move from group to group, some enjoyed working in small groups of 2 or 3 children, while others preferred larger groups. Children had control of their social space. One child in particular tended to become frustrated with children at his group in the classroom. I observed that he moved away from the group for certain periods of time to work on his own, returning to the group when he was ready. There was a change of attitude towards the outdoors and the creatures found outdoors. One example of this is the class’ decision to protect an earthworm from the sunlight with leaves.

I am now continuing this research in a larger scale study. I am investigating the impact of the introduction of weekly Forest School sessions in an Irish Primary School setting. The Forest School sessions will take place in four mainstream classes, ensuring that there are observations of each of the curriculum levels as delivered in the Irish Primary school system. This is being conducted over the period of an academic year which ensures that each class engages in Forest School sessions for 10 weeks. The impact will be explored through the perspective of the teacher and the child to explore whether the teaching and learning methodologies used during Forest School sessions are consonant with teaching and learning methodologies advocated in the Irish Primary School Curriculum

Further reading of the integration of the Irish Visual Arts curricular objectives through the Forest School approach can be found in Claire’s paper in The Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14729679.2018.1443481

Fresh Eyes

One of the aspects that I love most about working as an artist, particularly when engaging with a group or community, is the unknown. When I begin a project, nobody really knows what is going to happen, including me! This can be daunting. However, it is also a wonderful space to hold; one that allows for active listening and open response, intuitive exploration and discovery.

What I do know and trust entirely, is the creative process in which all my work is embedded. There will always be a thorough, considered and inclusive engagement. This will have a loose starting point; like a question, intention or broad theme. It will involve research, discussion, observation, documentation, and collection of information. As my sole agenda is usually to create an artwork of some description, I like to get a sense of the ‘bigger picture’ with all its nuances and particularities, whatever the situation. As the engagement unfolds, I constantly review and refine the information that comes to me, slowly shaping a response without feeling any obligation to make it fit a particular form. Eventually, as a result of this entire process, an outcome manifests. Usually it is one that is reflective and relevant, and will take a form that is both surprising and no surprise at all, because it was taking shape throughout the process. The pattern is always the same. Time and time again I doubt the process, usually when I am in the middle of it. Then, when I reach the end, I am reminded that it absolutely works. This is how I work as an artist and as an educator and this is how I am approaching my current role as Creative Associate on the Creative Schools Programme.

Schools are extremely active places. There are enormous pressures of time and workload on staff, pupils and management. The arts subjects are the easiest to squeeze out or the hardest to fit in. However, I am finding an overwhelming desire, from staff and from young people alike, to have more creativity, more freedom and experimentation and play within the curriculum and within school life. There are challenges around this of course, and there are some fears too. I have been engaging in active, visual and collaborative ways with my school coordinators and communities to unearth these challenges and fears and to also explore the opportunities and wishes around a ‘creative school’. Through workshops, surveys, activities, discussions and votes, I have been capturing all relevant voices; from those of the youngest pupils to that of the principle. We have been considering all aspects of the question of creativity in schools, from small practicalities to large visions.

The three schools that I am working with are thoroughly invested in this programme and are bringing great enthusiasm and honesty to the table and placing complete trust in the process that we are undertaking together. They are three very diverse schools, and three very different shapes are beginning to emerge…

Creative Schools: Working Together – Blog 3

As Spring slowly emerges with its brighter days and new beginnings, we too are delighted to get started with our new creative project in Scoil Bernadette.

After lots of planning and negotiating with calendars, our first visual arts workshop started on the 8th March with ten enthusiastic students, one from each class group, ready to pick up their pencils and get drawing.

During our first workshop we were introduced to our facilitators, Ailbhe Barrett and Rosaleen Moore who showed us some of their work and told us about their professional careers as artists. Ailbhe and Rosaleen are two artists who work in a supported studio as part of the Gasp programme. Gasp artists meet on Tuesdays in the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork and are facilitated by Mairead O’Callaghan (More information on supported artists and this project can be found here (www.crawfordartgallery.ie/Learn-and-Explore-Crawford-Supported-studio-Artists) We were certainly impressed to see their beautiful paintings and to hear of their celebrity appearances on the Late Late show.

We played a few icebreaker games to settle the nerves and to get to know each other a little better. Soon we were ready to get down to the busy work of creating. We each chose a word that represented the feeling of being at the workshop. Some of the words chosen were ‘happy’,’ listening’,’ together’, and ‘Cork’. It was the first step in expressing ourselves within the group. We then drew our words on paper, decorating them to our liking.

We finished the workshop with another fun game where in a circle we threw a ball of string from one person to another. We ended up with a visual representation of a very connected group. As one student remarked, it was all about ‘teamwork’.

The following workshop re-enforced this theme of working together. We were divided into two groups. Each group had to build a structure as high as they could. It was challenging, stressful, but lots of fun!

On the 22nd March the group set off for the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork City to get some inspiration. Here we met with Julie who gave us an extensive tour of the gallery where we viewed and interacted with the current exhibitions. We met with Ailbhe and Rosaleen there and got to visit the studio space where they work. We were lucky enough to have time to do some drawing in the Art Gallery at the end of our tour, taking inspiration from the paintings and installations we had seen.

So far the project is going well. The students look forward each week to having extra time in the school timetable to draw, build and create, taking inspiration from each other and the work of professional artists. After three weeks of working together, I feel that the group has bonded well and there is a collegial and supportive atmosphere which adds to the enjoyment of the workshops.

We have three weeks left to continue this work of creative collaboration. We are eager to continue to develop our skills and to discover our talents. We hope to have a day of celebration in the coming months to display the finished and unfinished work to parents, friends and the rest of the school community. We are proud to be a creative school.

Ciara Gallagher Profile Pic Ciara has a PhD in English from Maynooth University. She has worked as researcher on the National Collection of Children’s Books (TCD) and “Gender Identity: Child Readers and Library Collections” at the Centre for Children’s Literature and Culture, DCU. She has taught English in various universities and currently works at Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership as office administrator.

Beginnings – Blog 3

The Creativity and Change course continually pushes its participants, encouraging us to engage, act, and reflect in new and different ways. One of the most fundamental ways it stretches its participants is simply through giving students the opportunities to start something new – to begin new actions, challenges and experiences, and in the process, to unearth new confidence for future beginnings.

At each of the course weekends, we participate in intensive workshops on different creative forms. For example, one weekend focused on poetry and theatre. We moved from creating poetry as a collective to individual creative writing and finally into spoken word performances and a poetry slam. The following day, performance and action were channelled into theatre as we engaged with some of the techniques of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Throughout the course of the weekend we moved through reflection and action; from our own words to shared action and performance through poetry, and from the action and movement of the Theatre of the Oppressed to reflection again. Not only did we experience this as participants, we considered this process as facilitators – thinking through ways we could engage people through these creative forms in a manner that encourages interaction with beginning to write and enact change.

Our next task on this weekend was putting this cycle of reflection and action to use in a new context as we moved from the safe space of the Creativity and Change workshops to the public space of the city. Part of our challenge for the afternoon was to engage the public in some way, encouraging people to contribute to creating something as a group. My group set about getting people to contribute to a line poem, written in chalk on the street, beginning with the line “I know I am home when…” I was surprised at how readily and generously people got involved, moved by their openness and warmth. Individuals and small groups contributed their lines, writing on the pavement, marking the city space out as theirs a little bit more. Groups of people contributing collectively take away some of the pressure and open up new possibilities. The same was true for our groups, as our styles of interaction with the public crossed and intersected, and we reflected on and learned from each other’s actions. Even though our engagement with the public was small and transient, we learned it is possible to bring people together to create something worthwhile, that people care and will get involved.

The willingness and want to be part of a collective is encouraging in these times when we need it most. Now to find all our different ways of starting.

Naomi Cahill works as a Creative Associate for Creative Schools and is founder and director of Bespoke Productions. She is an experienced and qualified drama teacher of primary, second level and adult education as well as children with special needs and adults with physical and intellectual disabilities. Naomi graduated with a degree in Drama & Theatre Studies from University College Cork. She further completed the Higher Diploma in Arts in Drama Education and was awarded‘Highest Academic Achievement’ from the Leinster School of Music & Drama. Through Bespoke Productions, Naomi leads drama courses in Ireland and abroad which are aimed at building confidence, self-esteem and developing communication skills. She most recently directed a modern version of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ at Teatro Re Grillo, Licata, Sicily. Having performed both on stage and in film, she enjoys sharing her experience with her students. She is delighted to be working as a Creative Associate for the Creative Schools programme.

Creative Schools: An Insight into the Creative Schools Project: Barryoe National School – Blog 4

My schools are at a very exciting stage of the Creative Schools Project. Plans are being brought to life in all schools. At this stage, I thought it would be interesting to give you an insight into the project so far in one of my schools: Barryroe National School. The school is located on the Ibane peninsula and is surrounded by beautiful beaches and countryside. It has 176 pupils enrolled and a speech and language unit. The school is very lucky to have a wealth of creative local people and staff who are open to new ideas and projects. Parents strive to give and provide the best all round education possible for their children and encourage involvement in the arts. The school was delighted to receive entry to the Creative Schools Project this year and are thrilled to be accepted again next year. Their enthusiasm for the project is evident and they are very much making the most of this fantastic opportunity. They have dedicated a lot of time to the project and I have had the opportunity to engage in meetings with all staff and students. There is a core team of staff within the school working on the project including: the Creative Schools Coordinator, two teaching members of staff and local artist: Eilbhe Donovan.

Puppetry:

All students in the school were lucky enough to attend ‘Dowtcha Puppets’ performance of ‘Listen Janey Mac’ in the school. They were given this opportunity to inspire them to create their own work.‘Dowtcha Puppets’ are a renowned puppet specialist company based in Cork. They came to the school and did three separate performances of their show for different class groups. It tells the tale of a character called ‘Janey Mac’ and her puppy ‘Pepper’. They make a wish in a magical stone circle in their aunty Megan’s back garden and find themselves transported back in time, trying to find each other and their way home. One aspect of the Creative Schools project is the importance of finding ways in which the arts/creativity can be linked with and used to enhance the teaching of other subjects. Along with giving the students an appreciation for puppetry, the show produced by ‘Dowtcha Puppets’ also provided students with a history of Cork and Ireland. All students really enjoyed the experience:

“It was great to see the puppet show before we did our own one”. (Student)

“The setting and the props were great and how they showed the puppets when they were far away –it was a very funny story”. (Student)

“It was strange working behind the puppet stage. The lighting made it exciting. The show was great the way the characters were going to another dimension”. (Student)

Voice of Young People:

As I mentioned previously there is an importance emphasis on ‘The Voice of Young People’ in the Creative Schools Project. At the beginning of the year, I was given the opportunity to do a workshop with a group of students (with representatives from each class). I also met with all class groups and teachers to gain a further understanding of student’s artistic/creative interests. We regularly consult with the ‘Creative Schools Student Advisory Group’ when making plans. Having gained inspiration from watching ‘Dowtcha Puppets’ performance, a group of students (from all classes) worked with their drama teacher Annemarie to write their own devised puppet show piece. Other classes had the opportunity to make stick puppets and perform in puppet shows linked to fairy tales for their fellow students. Students are also very lucky to have the opportunity to work with renowned artist: Eilbhe Donovan to create their own air dough puppets. It is evident from their feedback that the process is very much child led:

“It was great fun – we were in charge of what we wanted to do. It took a long time but it was worth it when you saw how it played out in the end. We would love more time to work on it!” (5th Class Student)

“We did all the work”. (3rd Class Student).

“We could make up our own story, make up our own characters”. (3rd Class Student)

“Our characters could talk or not e.g. our castle was the narrator. We used objects that don’t normally speak and gave them voices”. (3rd Class Student).

“We added jingles. We were free to decide everything ourselves e.g. I had a potion and it didn’t have to be a certain colour – I could choose”. (3rd Class Student)

“We could move around and work in small groups. There was no right or wrong information and it was exciting that we could add props”. (3rd Class Student)

“We were working together and we weren’t fighting – we were laughing”. (2nd Class Student)

“We could act out the characters – perform and add music”. (2nd Class Student)

“While making the puppets it was difficult to get everyone working together”. (2nd Class Student)

“We made puppets in afterschool together”. (2nd Class Student)