The Pedagogical Wall, Stockholm...

Stockholms Pedagogiska Vägg (Stockholm's Pedagogical Wall) is designed for children to get creative in the public space... a space for children to leave their mark, their ideas, their imagination - not for a long time but for a while, as the wall is painted over and over very much like the Together Paintings I have described before ( you can read about them here).

It is a wall that is forever evolving. A place to come as an individual, or a family or together with a preschool or school or fritids (after school activity centre).

The wall is available for free expression or as part of a workshop together with an art facilitator that will inspire and challenge thinking about art, creative expression, and children's rights in public space.

I met up with Rikard Olsen who started the project with backing from Stockholm city with the aim to promote children's rights to take more place in public spaces. This project has had a steady trickle of visitors over the summer, as well as schools and preschools visiting too to do workshops where art and movement are combined.

The aim is for the wall to continue after the summer - with workshops for schools and preschools to continue and also at weekends.

I think the wall is important for several reasons...

• Children need to be a part of the public space... not only so they can see themselves as active participants of the society and not just beings that adults create spaces for... but also so that adults can see the competence of children. That their ideas are given space to be aired, that their talents can be shown off... and this wall is open for ALL children of ALL ages and even during the short time that I was there I saw a huge range of ages and Rikard had a natural instant good rapport with them all.
• children benefit from doing art outside, where there is an opportunity to experiment with paints and materials in a way that indoor art seldom allows you
• the wall is massive... if allows children to think big, no small paper here, there is space to really go wild, to paint with the whole body - to stretch high and bend low and paint big.
• there is the chance for risky-play. I love the fact there are step-ladders, over the years I have taken step-ladders into the atelier (and other spaces) for the children to climb and experiment with taking risks - in the sense of how high do you dare to climb. Each child will find that step that they dare use, some will challenge themselves, others will watch until they find the courage themselves... parents and teachers get the chance to see that children are capable of using step ladders... even preschool children!!
• we often talk of making children's learning visible... and this is a space that also does that. the children are learning about techniques, they will learn about the difference between brush and roller (and other materials used) - they can learn about mixing colours, they can learn about how other children express themselves and be inspired, on the wall this time were various languages... so we were learning that this is a space of diversity where all are welcome.
• it is a place to interact. Not just with the wall and the materials... it can also be a space to interact with others. A meeting place.

If I was to sit here longer I would probably come up with more reasons for why this wall is important... these are the ones that have just rolled off the top of my head.

If you are in Stockholm then I recommend that you head to T-bana Medborgarplatsen and check out the wall, take along children and let them get creative.
if you work at a school or preschool why not get in contact with them and see if you can book a session/workshop (the link to the page and a way of contact is at the top of this blogpost)

I really hope this wall goes from strength to strength and encourages others to take action and ensure that children are a part of public spaces.

If you are interested in children's rights and children and public spaces, then please check out the facebook group Children and Public Spaces

The BIG portraits continue

Today was all about skin colour and hair colour...

The children looked carefully in the mirror at the colour of their skin... we looked to see if we were all the same colour or not... and we worked out that we all had our own special skin colour unique to ourselves. They ALL though felt that orange was the colour that they needed to start with... this surprised me a great deal - and I wondered if they would all turn out like carrots... but bit by bit the skin colours took their shade... with white, yellow, brown and red being added in different amounts until everyone was satisfied. They kept checking in the mirror, and even paiting a little on themselves to see if the shade was right..

The they got busy painting the skin areas of their portraits... different techniques, different amounts of focus and different amounts of verbal support needed. The child that had been so reluctant at first and that I had helped by drawing his portrait in the beginning has proved I made the right decision... (one does get a little nervous) he has thoroughly enjoyed the painting process and is not the slightest bit ashamed of sharing the fact that he did not draw the outline... he has taken a great deal of care in filling in the colour.

Compared with last year there is a huge difference between doing this activity with two children and seven children... there is not the same time and patience to enter the same depth of dialogue around the similarities and differences of skin colour... but there was still the opportunity for this group of seven to explore these ideas.

Afterwards the children admired their artwork and I noticed that they were talking about it on an individual level... that one is beautiful and that one too... I only heard positive comments. I dropped a casual comment about how I thought the fact that the whole of the group was represented on this piece of art made it beautiful... they paused and looked at the art again... yes there are eight of us... 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.. let me count too.... 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8... we are all there.

it is so fascinating to take the time to listen and hear how the children see and view what they are doing... since we were working individually, yet together the children had not seen the togetherness until pointed out... they had been so focussed on their individual efforts.

The individual and the group... that is what preschool is all about... This painting has a whole new symbollic value for me now.

International Fairy Tea Party Celebration 2015

This year, like last year, we had plan A and plan B... plan A was a fairy celebration outside at the edge of the local forest... so we could do all our fairy activities in the forest and also on the grassy area at its edge. Plan B is the same activities, with small adjustments, indoors in the preschool if the weather was rainy... as this is a day for the children to wear their wings... some with bought wings, others with wings made from paper, paint, glitter etc made at preschool - non of these wings would fair well in the rain... especially the home-made ones.
We had also made an enormous orange from plaster of paris (round a balloon mould) that even though I had tried my best to seal it and make it water proof (ish) I knew it would more or less dissolve in the wet... the ornage was an important part of the fairy theme, as this year we took our inspiration from Elsa Beskow's picture book "The Sun Egg" - where a fairy discovered an orange for the first time lying in the forest and mistook it for the sun's egg. Eventually they discovered that it was a sun fruit and drank the juice inside by pushing a grass straw through the skin.

This was something we wanted to emulate in our celebration... and as it was raining, and had been more or less all week... we went with plan B.

While the children had a song meeting, two of us set up the fairy celebration so that when they had finished singing we could shrink the children with a pinch of fairy dust as they walked into the the magic forest where the giant orange was...
The children were amazed and even more amazed by the fact they could suck real orange juice up from it!!

During the morning the children would return to the forest and take a few more gulps of juice...

At this point they also received a magic wand - filled with grapes... a fruit snack to keep them going. And as they munched on the grapes the children were presented with all the fairy activities...

In the atelier tha children could paint a magic forest with seven different kind of green. A chance to be a part of a together painting as well as explore many shades of green. They could also paint a fairy house and corks. If this had been outside it would have been a big plastic sheet fixed between two trees for the children to paint on... it was fabulous last year as the children could see each other through the plastic and the sunlight poured through the colours and made it all magical...

Fairy tea in the fairy tent...  Here the children slowed down.. their language changed and there were lots of please and thank yous and could you pass the tea please... as well as trying out nature's fairy sweets... homemade sweets made from dates etc... no sugar! beautiful tea pots and tea cups to create a magical feel... and magic tea that required imagination, otherwise it just tasted of water...

Fairy wand making... a choice if stick and then there were pens, glue, glitter, wool and ribbon to choose from.. the children were free to decorate their wands... great fine-motor skill training. Had this been outside the children would have found their own sticks in the forest first.

Fairy face painting... we kept it to natures colours... greens, yellow and white so that faces could be designed with a nature feel of forest fairies. A wonderful way to paint and explore their own faces.

Fairy dancing - with magical fairy landscapes prejected onto two mosquito nets hanging down from the ceiling... there was also an overhead projected on the wall above a bouncy mattress so the children could pretend to fly in the magic light. This was amazing to watch the children venture into the landscapes and play with their shadows and with the light. There was music playing with a magical feel. The younger children mostly explored... the older ones (who have explored this before, danced). If we had been outside the dance was to be on the grassy area with bubbles being blown to make it magical.

Fairy potion making. Lavendar, flowers, plants, juniper berries, bicarbonate, vinegar, coloured water - plenty to mash, whisk and mix to create magical potions... plenty to talk about... what are you making, what magic will it do.. and why?
If this was outside the children would have had the chance to collect more ingredients themselves to add to the potions.

 The fairy morning flowed beautifully... and as we rounded off to prepare for lunch I moved the orange back to the staff room so that there was space for the youngest children to sleep after lunch... one of the children watched and suddenly exclaimed "Its not a real orange... you have been fooling us" with big wide eyes!!

My group of children headed outdoors for just over an hour of outdoor play in the wet... wings left inside... but pretend wings on!

On Monday I will be sharing some images of the fairy tea party with the children... not only from our celebration but from those shared in the International Fairy Tea Party facebook page from around the world. So wonderful to be a part of this celebration of play and imagination shared with others who believe in play as much as us!

Together painting on the Square

All year we have been making Together Paintings... working together, painting together, creating together - learning to collaborate, learning to listen to each other and learning to appreciate each others abilities and to learn from them...

If you are new to my blog you won't know about our project... "Together on the Square" where we are focussing our attention on the public space right outside the preschool. The children have been learning about design, they have been learning about their own wants and wishes, and those of their peers... we have also been asking those living in the sheltered housing /retirement home what they would like to see on the square... in an aim to design a square for EVERYONE - to be "Together on the square"...

Today we were visited by Karin and Anna who are responsible for the redesign of the area - Anna being the lanscape architect I mentioned last week. We got to share our ideas with them, and they listened enthusiastically to our ideas and wrote them down. It feels so important and so wonderful that the children's opinion are being listened to and given value... this is how it should be! ALL the time... a city that listens to its children... to all of its citizens...

Two of the recurring themes that everyone has mentioned, regardless of age, has been more colour and more flowers/green/nature...

So this afternoon we carried a table out into the middle of the square and started painting flowers ... adding lots of colour...

We used watercolours cakes directly on the paper with brushes and a spray bottle so that the water would stay clean, but also to add an experimental dimension to the whole Together Painting... and it certainly worked as I hoped... there were those children that just sprayed on the cake of paint to get their colour and those that sprayed everywhere and let their colour flow... in the end the spraying became the most important part of the process... so the flowers that had been painted became "rained" on and became blurred as they flowed into each other... the children ran back and forth to the actual flowers growing in the flower displays newly placed in the square - and the fact that they wanted to make purple involved expanding the number of colours available by adding a blue to mix (and to get to hear that wonderful tone of surprise as a child discovers purple for the first time by mixing... a new discovery, a moment of true creativity and learning)...

Before our outdoor art session was over the children started to use their hands and create colourful handprints on the ground...

This was a session where we became a part of the square - people came up to us and talked about how the square needed more colour and how wonderful it was to watch the happy creative children interacting with each other and the paint.

The wind blew a little chilly, despite the glorious sun... and a half an hour was long enough with wet colourful hands before we needed to go inside and warm them up again!

it was actually a good idea to have a little distance between the table and the flowers... the little run back and forth helped keep us warm...

lots of experimenting... it was fabulous watching the colours flow in the puddles that collected here and there due to lots of spray action.

many wishes for a colourful square coming true!

Painting TOGETHER with eggs

The Together on the Square project has very much inspired us in the atleier with our TOGETHER paintings - so it seemed very appropriate to do the same Easter inspired egg painting as last year witha few adjustments...

click here to read about last year

This year instead of fruit boxes we used trays... this meant the children had to be much more careful in what they were doing... I noticed last year that the high sides of the box allowed the children to feel safe about the egg being contained and therefore did not work as hard together on keeping the egg whole... the trays had low edges... enough to keep the egg on the tray as long as they were focussed on what they were doing.

It requires a lot of collaboration and communication - not just with words but feeling and sensing the movements in their partner so that they could work TOGETHER to make the egg roll...

Of course the egg fell off a couple of times (it was boiled, so there was no mess, except for a lovely paint trail as it rolled a bit).

There was LOTS of nervous laughter and excitement.

Another reason for doing just two at a time, is the whole concept of taking turns and taking joy in other people's joy - empathy - this part seems to be the hardest part... especially for the children who have already had their turn... it is a process... a process we are seeing lots of positive results as the children become better and better at giving each other pep talks and supporting each other in their processes. So it DOES feel like a worthwhile process to continue with...

Black and White

This piece of art was started to meet the needs of the children to feel the paint... to experience creativity with their whole bodies without the need of using paper after paper to meet the need of this feeling to physically experience art without the intentionality of creating SOMETHING except for the experience... that it is becoming something is just a biproduct of the process...

 It began with the word "Together" and the aim that this was a place for us to paint TOGETHER. A place to experiment with the paint and also to collaborate. Just one pot of white and one pot of black paint was put out - indicating only two at a time could paint. This was so that the children do not have to stress about there being enough space to create. The easel fits 4 children easily, but I wanted this to be a place of freedom from stress of "this is my area" and also by encouraging them to swap paint pots with each other also helped with the sense of collaboration. The children were told before hand that this would be a painting that would grow and grow and that it was OK to paint on top of somone elses work... as I would be taking photographs of what they were doing all the time... in the same way that it was OK to paint over my letters...
This first day it was necessary to write a list of who wanted to paint as there was so much anxiety amongst the children that they would not get the chance to paint... the list worked great... and once all the children had had a turn it was open for those who wanted to continue or have another go... this worked out very well, and the children had found their rhythm and were able to either play or paint as they wished.

 The next day it was open from the very start for those to paint who wished to... after rest time only three children wanted to be in the atelier, two on the easel and one creating art with loose parts (and informing me when I should take a photo of her process). After a while two more children entered the atelier and wanted to paint and hovered over the shoulders of the painters asking every 10 seconds, "when are you finished, I want a go"...
It took a few attempts to explain that these children had the right to explore and paint as long as they wished, and that when they were finished that they too would then have as long as they wished to paint... and that in the meantime they were welcome to watch with respect or to play elsewhere and that I would call them when there was a paint pot available... it eventually worked...

And once both these children had finished their princesses they put their paintbrushes down and went to tell their friends that they could paint now if they wished. the two children came immediately. One painted for 10 seconds and then her need for painting was met. The other painted for a long time having the whole easel for herself - she moved across the whole of the easel painting her and there with a purpose only she could understand. I filmed her creativity and have watched it and still I cannot see a pattern in what she is doing BUT it is quite clear that SHE has a clear purpose in her actions... During this phase one of the children that had painted a princess said "but now my princess is gone" and we talked about how I had taken photographs so that she would be able to see her princess again and also that her princess was STILL there... she was just hiding under the paint... this made her smile with an understanding that yes, her princess WAS still there.

 After a while the children all moved on to other things... there was not much paint left and with the weekend upon us I thought I would use it rather than waste it... I started to fill the paper with spirals singing the song "Lilla Snigel" (Little Snail) - it did not take long before the other paintbrush was picked up and more spirals were being painted and then I handed over my paintbrush to another child who also wanted to paint snails...
Once the paper was filled with snails then there was a new purpose to the painting... drawing lines to connect the snails which then devloped into making lines right across the paper...

 Here you can see a very short snippet of the movement of the art. There was a great deal of movement on both days, with song, dance and moving back and forth...

Here is the art at the end of day 2. Next week we will be continuing with it... but I have a feeling that there might not be a great deal of interest - as I am introducing clay next week to this group ... and they are VERY excited about the prospect... BUT I am also going to be introducing a third colour to the art... so one can never really know.