Thursday 19th of April - Traces of Children's Graphics in Town

Thursday 19^th of APRIL

International Centre Loris Malaguzzi –Auditorium

“Traces of Children's Graphics in Town”

Maddalena Tedeschi

Video Hall in the Marco Gerra Exhibition Hall.

It's important crucial, vital that children have these connections with their community.

When given the opportunity, these connections take the form primarily of graphics. They go beyond the obsticals of what is perceived struggles with presentations or relationships with members of the community to create a new culture, new cultural work. These are evident in the exhibit Traces of Children’s Graphics in Town, where we wanted to make an event a very public event, drawing attention to ourselves and what we do in the community. Schools were asked to chose one shop or place in town and make graphics of it for display for the community, in children’s language of graphics/signs/messages/drawings. Using this Italian language:

Graphic – using a tool

Senyo – making a line

De Senyo – receiving a line

We set up a date present throughout the town on the 12^th of November for the town to come alive with children’s work. Each school chose a place in the old town, places chosen were, restaurants, food markets, bookstores, libraries, bottle shops. The schools were to work under the conditions – SHORT TIME TO WORK – GRAPHICS WITH NO COLOUR

This was to offer people opportunities to see the work we do in our approach.

We wanted images to be poor simple graphics – we wanted to build a relationship with the work we do everyday in the community. It was not to display the work we do in the centres but pieces of everyday work. The language of signs and drawing language we all posses.

Loris Malaguzzi, “(Graphics is) a neutral language which belongs to all children” It is important to be extremely cautious in all the interpretations we do here, interpretations can not be unilateral” 

MATTERS THAT LEAVE TRACES

Documents of learning, Matters that Leave Traces types of marks - teachers exploration

Gulliver school

Isabella Meninno

Children draw with pleasure we need to provide environments and spaces for children to do this everyday!!

Sometimes children specialise and build up models, concepts or ideas – these draw form over time.

We are interested in the context we offer children. We wan to be able to better analysis our adult work in the contexts we offer the children. If we offer different materials what might happen, we ask ourselves, this was the driving force of our project, in display in Reggio Children.

What happens on plastic, felt, corregated board, cardboard, tin. What might happen in the image of the work and when children are doing it. A kind of magic.

Do adults know the materials they offer do they explore them, themselves first, a kind of deconstructing their thinking. HOW TO PROPOSE THESE IDEAS WITH CHILDREN!

UNCOMPOSED CHAIRS

Robinson school

Atelierista Loretta Bertani

Our objective was to decompose the chair – a great provocation

 We looked at the language of mark making. We looked at children feeling well, staying well, our first project was the table. I nthe beginning we used special magnifying lens looking at food. At the mathematics of setting the table, looking at settings in many different ways.

When asked to chose a place in the town we looked at a restaurant, we were very concernened with the well being of the table , taking acare at the table in context of where we were ‘in a resturant’ and at the context of taking care in general. The children visited the restaurant and considered this and with permission took a chair from the restaurant to work with in the classroom.

They asked themselves what is it that makes you feel ‘ well being’ at home at the table one child said ‘ I feel well at the table’.

 They looked through the conversations had wit hthe children and considered the ‘boredom of waiting’ and how children deal with this in a restaurant nad at home.

Children experiemented with the many different tools used at the table and focused on the material napkin and looked at the the many formations they could make with napkins.

They used the language olding, smoothing, opening, tearing rolling into a ball, opening with oyur hand.

There was an empathy between the material and the children and the material.

The children used a cut out of the chair photographed to re-draw it as an animal and crocodile as a graphic to assist their imagination. A relationship between a chair and a body is researching they learnt.

They look to destabilise the child body to become transformed. 4 different perspectives from children were shown, their quotes were shown also.

The teachers choices are of great importance in the way the project unfolds, they came to decisions based on students work in 2-3, small groups and medium sized groups of 8-10. The children worked out, being watched by others was very important this helped them focus their ideas. They asked themselves what is the adults’ role of intervention.

Kids lend and loan ideas from each other giving advise. These expressions exchanges are legitemized by the adults’ work and observations.  Students work journeys are individualised by the 27^th of Oct ready for presentation Nov 21^st, all changes are annotated. It is really important for students to look at their drawings, their work over time. Giving the children that time to look over their work this happens a couple of days a week, this is very very important.

To Recognise and Reknow

They asked the children in relation to the project ‘Is it easier to draw a child in a composed or uncomposed way on a chair”. New journeys will they be porportions or disporportions.

Points of View

International Centre State School

Francesca Manfredi

Documentation is shared by people over competencies, experiences and points of view.

It attributes to experiences that have been lived it is not a narrative – it is a point of view.

REALITY IS A DIMENTIONAL SUBJECTIVITY

Subjective nature of seeing it over time.

Drawing is not only a gesture but a thought. Drawing activates listening to ourselves in a more active way. The drawing traces, the idea and emotions which the reality has generated within us. Not drawing which is illustrative but drawing that describes the idea of things. “How we represent the dialogue of things”. The world is made up of many things material if we as a team create a dialogue with things (ie: trees in the woods) we create a greater capacity to see them – to look with concentration > this is the stopping slowing down of time.

Drawing is provisional. We must keep Alive this sense of complexity that is part of reality. Do not flatten or break down this complexity.

This may be reflected in

TRANSPARENCY IN ROOMS

DIFFERING LEVELS

EXPLROING TRANSFORMATION THROUGH MATERIALS

STUDENTS HAVING OPPORTUNITIES

EXPERIEMENT WITH CONCEPTS AND TIME

Caring and observing gardens also represent this, this is very important.

TIME WITH MATERIALS IS A VERY LONG TIME.

Transformation is intr\egral to our ways of seeing and looking it is represented through materials to explore materials.

WE MUST GIVE OURSELVES TIMES AND PSACES TO WORK DIRECTLY WITH THE CHILDREN AND MATERIALS. WE AS ADULTS EXPLORE PLACES FIRST TO CREATE MAPS AND POINTS OF VIEW TO HELP US ORIENTATE THE WAYS THE STUDENTMIGHT EXPLORE THE SAME AREA. Kids look at multiple geographies of the same world.

Schools’ whole RE community Project – old city

Super marcato Xian Hua

Kids chose materials from the supermarket and bought them back to school. They made compositions with these objects. They noted different variable in light, composition, creating order and relationshios between things. There are rhythms and justapositions, linear and non-linear.

KIDS MAKING DECISIONS

Their representations appear mathematical.

POINTS OF VIEW means realities that are multi-dimensional

TEMPO – Time

SOGGETTIVITTA – Subjective

What materials do we choose?

What types of things do we want to present?

What ideas do we want to explore?

What is the relationship between the contexts we have?

A HABITAT OF EXPERIENCES OF THINKING OF IDEAS

An ecosystem of the environment and context.

Children – How do they think, connect to adults thinking, connection to other children’s thinking???

Children need to reencounter the same contexts they need to find out if it is a stable realisation.

Teachers it is fundamental the point in which we create contexts.

We cannot consider an experience as a stable encounter if they have only experienced it once.

Reminded that each encounter changes as no two experiences are the same!

We are opening many different entries ways into learning> providing each child his or her own way of learning.

MULTIPLE ACCESS POINT TO LEARNING

We need to have joy, fun learning dialogue or the well planned thought out experience will die!!!

It is the process in which the adults assess themselves they have to through the children’s ideas see if they offer them the best possible conditions for learning to take place.