A good day

cup

Today was Kate’s conference – Creativity and learning in the context of social regeneration. It was a great event and a wonderful opportunity to re-connect with Pippa Stein, Barbara Comber, Gunther Kress and Jennifer Rowsell (and, of course Dr Joolz). We got active, taking digital photographs – some of mine looked rather like the cup (above), but of course we couldn’t take them with us, so I recreated the experience back home! Something Barbara said about the politics of pedagogical imaginings really stuck with me. I think she also quoted Bill Green on imagining schools as media labs…and later on, Myra Barrs put up a quote from Eisner (I hope I jotted it down accurately): ‘it may be that shifting the paradigm of education reform and teaching from one modelled after the clock-like character of the assembly line into one that is closer to the studio or laboratory might provide us with a vision that suits the competencies and futures of the students we teach.’ Interestingly the projects we saw seemed to all feature agentive learners, participating with each other in sustained and purposeful creative activity. That seems much more worthwhile than the idea of delayed gratification so often pedalled in skills-based curricula that aim to create citizens of the future.