Playing in the Shadows and Bringing Into the Light: Young People and Community Experiences

• In Event: 65.042 - Arts partnerships and innovative projects to promote cultural awareness in education

Abstract

Studying preschool, kindergarten and studio teachers and children’s learning about reuse materials and light, shadow, paint and narration alongside of artists in the community leads to a shift in the images we collectively hold (Rinaldi, 2006) of the young child. This research paper focuses in on school experiences using narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and pedagogical documentation (Parnell, 2012) and takes a page from Burri’s work as expressed in Reggio Children (2005). Working with three artists (a photographer, a painter and a building-materials artist) as well as teachers and children from the full-day university lab school, a long term study of repurposed materials in shadows and light emerged. The children's learning was captured and pedagogically documented in various ways, such as through videography, photography, narration and so on. The artist, teachers, children and parents worked to display the children's thinking, designs and efforts in an art gallery downtown and the artists hosted a gallery showing for all parents in the project and the school - infant, toddlers, preschool and kindergarten families.

Further, the children's work was debuted on the city’s First Thursday - an evening event where all artists from across the city open their studios and galleries and the city inhabitants walk through to view the artists’ work. In this case, people viewed and interacted with the children's representational thinking about light, shadow and reuse materials and the gallery provocations (interactive spaces) created by the artists as inspired by many child-created public works in the city of Reggio Emilia, Italy (Cagliari and Ghirardi, 2009; Reggio Children, 1996, 2004 2012). The gallery’s interactive components were meant to provoke the inhabitants’ learning about children, the children's learning and educator and artists' learning. Problems that arose from the study stemmed from the artists' original conceptions of children's capabilities as the project components were conceived, such as thinking children were not able to handle technology and videography. A major implication that surfaced from the research was the educational interest in rethinking art-related terms in young children' work and play. Rethinking the meaning of children as artists and children as representational thinkers who 'make thinking visible' and 'design out into the world' culminate the collaboration between the educators and artists.

Author

• Will Parnell, Portland State University