CONTEXT: This is the 2020 lockdown edition of a workshop Practice, Movement and Play in Learning for the module ‘The Arts, Culture & Education and Learning, Participation & the Southbank Centre’ Module, as part of the MA in Education in Arts and Cultural Settings, at the School of Education, Communication and Society, King’s College London, which I have been delivering since 2019 at the invitation of Dr Anwar Tlili. See slideshow here, and the description and recommended readings below. I delivered two seminars this year which enabled students to respond to the points raised in the recorded lecture, one during midday, and another in the evening. What lively, international cohorts they were. Engaged, inquisitive and outspoken, both sessions went slightly over. Feedback has been consistently positive. One student thanked me for reminding them of the purpose of art and education, to which I thanked them for reminding me of the meaning of what I do.

DESCRIPTION: In this session, we will explore how creative practice, movement and play can enrich learning activities in an educational and/or cultural setting. In the first part of the session, we will use an example of a creative workshop entitled Hand-in-Hand (Kai Syng Tan 2016) to run through some of the associated theoretical, historical and practical issues and possibilities.  We will refer to body-mind-world poetics from the Chinese tradition of Daoism (Taoism) to frame our approach. Examples we will cover include: Situationist International’s dérive in the streets of Paris in the 1950’s, filmmaker Werner Herzog’s notorious Rogue Film School (which teaches lock-picking and hiking!), and more from participatory art and live art.  In the second part of the session, we will apply some of the concepts we have touched on, to design creative workshops involving four hypothetical groups of participants: I) migrants with limited ability in English II) neurodivergent children III) teenagers addicted to electronic devices IV) elderly people with limited mobility. In particular, we will consider how we can adapt these activities in the contexts of social-distancing and/or lockdown. By the end of the session, we will be able to begin to build our own toolkit, to find ways to meaningfully embed creative practice, movement and play when designing learning activities. We will be able to conceptualise, design and successfully carry out practice- and movement-led workshops, and think about how they can work for various contexts

FEEDBACK INCLUDES:

I heard from many students who thought it was really engaging and thought-provoking session. I heard some informal feedback and clearly the content and approach went down really well and was very well balanced between your thoughtful input and student participation.

KINGS COLLEGE LONDON Programme Leader, the School of Education, Communication and Society, Dr Anwar Tlili

KEY READING/WATCHING:

  1. All the Queen’s Men (ATQM): Powerful transdisciplinary socially-engaged collective led by award-winning artist Tristan Meecham in Melbourne, Australia and beyond. Exuberant, contemplative, compassionate, authentic, decolonised, inter-generational and cross-cultural, programmes include mass street dancing and 6-hour marathon running, afternoon dance with LGBTQIA+ elders and more. Read their strategic playbook here, and approach to practice here.
  2. Bishop, Claire. 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London; New York: Verso Books. Chapter 9: ‘Pedagogic Projects: ‘How do you bring a classroom to life as if it were a work of art?’ pp 241-274.
  3. Live Art Developmental Agency. 2018. What is Live Art?
  4. Short chapter on Hand in Hand (2016):   ‘Hand-in-Hand: Activating the Body in Motion to Re-Connect with Ourselves and Others amidst a World in Motion and Commotion’. In: Drevon, G., Gwiazdzinski, L., Klein, O. and Benayoun, M. (2017). Chronotopies: Lecture et écriture des mondes en mouvement (Chronotopics: Time, Art and Cartography. Representations of Populations and Territories in Motion) [Grenoble]: Elya éditions. pp. 59-69. ISBN:9791091336109.
  5. Watch: #Antiadultrun: Artist’s project in which children (age 7-14) teach adults (top age: 82) how to play.

FURTHER EXAMPLES:

  1. On US-/Germany-based Thai artist Rikrit Tiravanja’s (b1961 Argentina) use of food in his social art: essay; video
  2. On Let’s walk by Singapore pioneer feminist social artist Amanda Heng (b1961 Singapore) here (though framed as ‘public’ or ‘installation’ art); about Heng here.
  3. Archival website of students undertaking the Making Theatre module, Department of Theatre Film & Television Studies, Aberystwyth University, led by Dr Andrew Filmer.
  4. Running Discourse in which conference delegates are taken out running at Documenta, Kassel, Germany.
  5. Herzog, Werner. 2016. Rogue Film School.

FURTHER READING/VIEWING:

  1. Bourriaud, Nicolas. 1998. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presse Du Reel.
  2. Ellingson, Laura L. 2017. Embodiment in Qualitative Research. 1 edition. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge.
  3. Fancourt, Daisy. 2017. Arts in Health: Designing and Researching Interventions. 1 edition. Oxford ; New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
  4. Ford, S., 2005. The Situationist International: A User’s Guide, Black Dog Publishing Ltd.
  5. Grant, David. 2010. That’s the Way I Think: Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADHD and Dyscalculia Explained. 3 edition. Routledge.
  6. Lengel, Traci, and Mike Kuczala. 2010. The Kinesthetic Classroom: Teaching and Learning Through Movement. 1 edition. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.
  7. Kolb, David A. 1984. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. 1st edition. Prentice Hall.
  8. McNiff, Jean. 2005. Action Research for Teachers: A Practical Guide. 1 edition. London: Routledge.
  9. Reason, Peter, and Hilary Bradbury. 2013. The Sage Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry And Practice. Edited by Hilary Bradbury-Huang. Second edition. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
  10. Schipper, Kristofer. 1994. The Taoist Body. University of California Press.
  11. Schon, Donald A. 1990. Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. Wiley.
  12. Tan, Kai Syng 2019 ‘Running (in) Your City’. In Mobilities, Literature, Culture, 163–86. S.l.: Palgrave Macmillan