Wednesday, 5 January 2011

Practitioner research: 5x5x5


5 x 5 x 5= Creativity

Established in 2000, 5 x 5 x 5=Creativity is an independent, arts based action research organization which helps support children in their exploration and expression of ideas, helping them develop creative skills for life. They wok with children all over the south west of England including Freshford primary School, Pitton, Bishop Henderson and Exeter house.

They are inspired by an educational approach used in northern Italy called Reggio Emilia that respects children as strong, capable protagonists in their own learning, it also recognizes children’s inquisitiveness and gives them the help, time, space and attention to explore and learn about the world around them.

The approach they take is rather than the participating adults necessarily being seen as teachers to the children they are more like companions rather than leaders working with them through research and learning through teaching. With this method the children get to explore the world around them, they see it as one big journey of discovery through their creations and what they are learning on the way, it is a more fun, exciting and proactive way of teaching in its self and the outcome is that the children come out of it more confident and with more self esteem and are better able to engage in various activities and are able to express themselves and problem solve more easily.

Some of their work that I find particularly interesting and that relates to my work is their work with Freshford primary school. They have been working with the school for over four years and one of their projects was to find for the children to look at discarded objects that they had found on walks such as, beach balls, rusty tins, feathers, pine cones, shells and sticks. They would then bring these objects into the classroom and almost create a museum.

These objects became the basis of an interest in collections, inspiration for fantasies and memories. They also took photographs and remembered sounds these were all important in the project for the children to share their “treasures” and memories of walks with family and friends through these objects and also helps them to make a real connection with the world around them. I like this project a lot because it really opens the children’s eyes to the world and they can look at objects like a stick or a stripy snail shell and use their creativity and imagination to see that the stick looks like antlers and that the snail shells are all different and beautiful in their own ways.

The similarity of this work and mine is that the children are working with found objects and using their imagination to create whatever they want the objects to be and part of my project is using found objects and letting children create structural objects with the found objects and to learn through play and reuse objects that some people wouldn’t even take another glance at.

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