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Early Years Creative Projects

Dream catchers and FT award winners!

Following FAB Food Photo competition we have won a fairtrade hamper of goodies with following photo from a couple of weeks back:

This week we worked on dreamcatchers from virginia creepers, wool and other bits:

Willow crowns and wands

We made crowns, bracelets, wands and stars ready for 'The kiss that missed', medieval & magic themed Garden club at Kings Heath Community Centre this Wednesday.

Search for a hero

Last week has been really exciting as Paganel Primary School decided to take a whole week to explore heroes in every class - Greek, local, vegetable and every other variety.  Everyone loves heroes.  It's a great tool for learning - to think about our heroes and villains, those we know, we imagine, or the ones in all of us.

I was leading two days of workshops on, 'Food heroes and villains'.  First thoughts on 'Food Heroes' was nutritional and healthy food - Initial chat with school suggested children and parents are not necessarily very familiar with fruit and veg (See brown bags vs. mystery meat).  This fitted well with my feelings to try and keep what 'heroes' and 'villains' the children chose (and why) open - partly to see what they already knew, but mainly to see what they thought about fruit and veg.  We choose to only look at fruit and veg, and not muddy the waters with processed or other foods.

Only veg and fruit (no obvious sweets, crisps or other bad boys) meant focus was on veg and fruit, but also on what children thought about the good stuff.  Not surprisingly, the look or the taste seemed more important to children than any health or other considerations.

So what makes a hero, or a villain?

Spiky Cucumber is caught stealing.
 Pumpkin and Sweetcorn save the day.

'Heroes save the world.'

'Heroes always help people.'

'Heroes are kind and think about other people.'

'Villains want to rob and keep it all for themselves.'

'Villains take over the world.   They want to control everything.'

The children understood straight away.   Every child in the school has been encouraged in this week to tell us about their own (personal) hero.  Children as young as four were quite capable to articulate what made a 'hero' and why.  Whether it's a Daddy, an Uncle or a family friend, children understood:

'He is kind because he helps people by taking them to hospital for treatment.'

Pyn Stockman, the creative practitioner working with other classes was making masks of heroes, based largely on the children's personal heroes.  We had vegetables, and not really enough time, staff or proper risk assessment to introduce carving.

So we concentrated on accessorising our vegetables, and creating scenery, lighting, other means of making a story, with the help of our storyboards.  Every child made their own hero or villain, but worked towards developing teamwork - children working together to create their stories.   The stories needed at least one hero and one villain for a story anyway, and this provided a means to make teams and explore why or how a hero does what he or she does.  Teamwork is recognised as important by teaching staff, but:

'We don't often work together like this.  It's not easy to assess individuals.'

The heroes lent a helping hand for the children to reflect:

'Heroes can work together.  Villains aren't very good at it.' (child comment)

The project has been really well supported by all the staff at the school, and both the Head and Deputy visited and talked to the children.  For a moment I worried what response the head teacher would get when he walked into a lively class and ask children, 'Where's the learning?'  Everyone was having fun, but the heroes were working tirelessly on the learning - children were having discussions together about what being a hero is all about, and the challenges of working together to save the world!

Teacher comment:

'Some of them found it quite difficult to work together...[The children said] 'I don't want this to happen, I don't want that to happen'.  They're a very independent bunch that like their own ideas.  They all enjoyed it...it will help teamwork in the class, and tomorrow if they actually put other people's heroes into their [creative writing] stories, that'll be great!'

Child comment:

'It's hard to work together when it is working in a noisy team.  It can be hard.  You need to listen to each other.'

Useful links:

Fruit and veg city


Bad School Lunches uncovered

What is a fair share?

Bright Space ends

Proud moment - receiving award from Barbara Nice
for networking at the Bright Space Oscars July 2011.
Photo thanks Gillian 

Bright Space closes it's doors today, and so ends an era for me.  Personally, it is a great loss, having worked as a creative agent and practitioner with both Bright Space and Creative Partnerships, but I think a far greater a loss for the children and schools who have benefited the most.

Despite it's well measured and documented achievements and the 'value for money' invested into the programme, there are no plans to replace Bright Space or Creative Partnerships.   The work ends, even if the database (and website) lingers on.

There are far fewer creative practitioners working in schools, and we all wait to see what changes are still to happen in the education sector.  There is, however, one legacy recognised by the present administration - the value of collaboration (Big Society), and the importance of our networks.  Now, more than ever, we need to pull together to make the most of every opportunity, and to shape the way education and other policies can most effectively support learning in our schools.

Thanks everyone who has worked at Bright Space, Creative Partnerships, and everyone connected to it. Let's keep in touch.

Do Cooperatives miss the funding bus?

Today I went to MAC for Co-operatives West Midlands networking event for 'creative cooperatives'.  Nick Matthews introduced the day, highlighting the continuing problem the coop has in promoting itself, with classic response, 'the Coop, is that like Tescos?'

No it isn't, and interestingly enough, despite a more troubling UK retail Coop, Cooperatives in Japan are apparently out competing Tescos.  Nick talked about organising creatives as like 'herding cats'.   He suggested the coop model works for creative types.  I'd agree they have a talent for working with a wide range of people, as was evident with the next presentation from Electro-swing Circus - Birmingham's newest Performance Co-operative.





There was discussion about the 'resilience' of cooperative structure in present eco climate - afterall, advantages of a workforce which owns the business works harder, and people buy the 'coop' brand believing it to be more 'ethical' (even if, returning to coop promotion problem, few people seem to know why coops might be better).

There was also mention of potential economic advantages in regard to taxing.  Steve Holdworth from IGNITE creative discussed why they became a Coop, initiated by advice from their accountant.

Maybe I should be more bothered by the hard financial advantages of coops, but I went to the event  because I wanted to explore the social benefits of sharing embodied in the Coop.  What advantages are there?  Well, Co-operative Futures were on hand, highlighting the 'family coop', and used a Bus analogy - a coop is like a bus taking people to profits/benefits.   A key question - Who do you want on the bus and why?  Who claims the dividend and who are your customers?  Does your model really work?  Hard questions, and subtly different from other business model questions.

Recently I've been thinking more about 'the funding bus' - a phenomena which is growing in our (creative and education) sector, where practitioners increasingly look to the funders first, and find a client to match.  The model is embodied by playground equipment manufacturers like Playforce, who provide support for schools to make applications to funding sources they have already identified, to buy the equipment they sell.  It's a tough challenge , when some applications require a great deal of knowledge, time and effort to complete, and where experienced form fillers are at a distinct advantage.  Surely this is a valuable skill we should be rewarding - if some of the funding targeted at schools goes to pay for fund raisers, isn't that OK, as long as they get some cash for the school?  Operating in a competitive market, some businesses may not be offering schools the best value - isn't that up to the schools to work out?

I was there because I thought the cooperative model may offer some solutions to these problems, sharing info, experiences, practice, to provide the 'best quality' creative work efficiently.  I was also pleased to see Future Melting Pot there, already on the way to being a cooperative - collective experience across a range of sectors to support and promote each other.

Coops don't necessarily avoid the funding bus, but they can provide social benefit and business solutions which ensure needs are more properly analysed, and more of the money is spent most effectively.  Coops seem to win hands down, financially, providing quality services, treating workers properly, generally more ethical, and yes, Coops, are sexy again.