From Reggio, we gain a perspective that the ‘Arts’ are equal and co-existing ‘languages’ of expression and communication alongside and together with other ‘languages’… of science… of mathematics… of written word… of other ways of knowing, describing and discovering the world. Loris Malaguzzi’s poem, “No Way. The Hundred is There” is testament to this.
Materials in this context are referred to as languages that are capable of expression and communication. However, it suggests that there is an ‘if’ there somewhere…
When working with early childhood educators, one of the things we jointly ponder is the issue of skills and if children must first understand the sensorial properties of materials such as clay, paint, charcoal, markers etc. to then be able to engage in representational, expressive and communicative purposes. It sometimes seems as if children are asking of materials in their first encounters what is this, what does it do… and then through working with it begin to ask what if or how can I use this? It fits in a similar way to how Anna Craft (2002) described ‘Possibility Thinking’ as a slide between a realm of finding out and discovering something before using it to represent a specific thought or idea.
Sylvia Kind (2010) challenges this however, saying that: “It is not necessarily a linear progression from experimentation to communication.” Instead, Kind invites us to think about children’s artistic languages as “explorations in interrogating spaces and investigating relationships, and as a social process of making meaning and as generative acts.” Therefore children can and do make meaning in complex ways during and simultaneously whilst exploring properties and affordances (the skills) of using any such media.
I have wondered for a long time about the process of meaning making in the act of drawing and in how that meaning can change across contexts. For example, I once watched a child drawing and after a while she declared to me it was a cat. Not five minutes later the same child, with the same drawing, told another educator it was a Beanie Baby. I was left feeling a little confused, was I wrong in my understanding or was the child wrong? Well it’s not going to be the child, it will always be me! It seems that meaning making is far more complex, and more generative of multiple meanings that may or may not connect in a logical manner.
I find this particular drawing that I have shared in a TEDx talk here fascinating for many reasons. One, because it ‘represents’ something huge and almost unimaginable neatly contained on a single piece of paper. Two, because the narrative that accompanies it is a strong theory of how the sun and moon works, and three, because of the sheer beauty and aesthetic of it from such a young child. But let us not (as my good friend and colleague Louise Lowings would say) get lost in the awe and wonder of it, for it might just dazzle us into doing and thinking nothing more about this, thus remaining fixed and static in our thinking ourselves.
If we take this drawing as simply an expression or communication of what she knows and understands then we would be in danger of just saying she is wrong in her thinking. The meaning as dictated through her words would be interpreted as singular and unchangeable. But Sylvia Kind is suggesting that there is more going on.
Now I read this drawing as a generative act, of thinking in action; an active inquiry into the physics of the solar system. She is not only actively trying to explain something but is also at the same time trying to understand it herself through the action of drawing and the movement of the material across a piece of paper. It is rich in description, of texture, space, relations, and movement made in a social engagement between where the marker meets the paper, herself and the atelierista who was observing and listening closely to what she was doing and saying. There was an interaction, it was intra-active. An encounter between what she knew and what she was becoming to know. She was drawing objects as she thought them, not as she saw them (to paraphrase Pablo Picasso). And of course there is the interaction with the audience, of who views the work and their own meaning making.
When viewing a piece of art, we the audience, are drawn into the world of making sense and meaning of that work, its materials, its presence. The meaning making therefore does not just lie with the maker but simultaneously sits with the viewer too. Therefore, this drawing is part of a complex creative process, what Sylvia Kind calls an object of encounter rather than just being a drawing that represents or communicates a fixed thought. Rather it is relational and interdependent.
“…art as a state of encounter considers that meanings are constituted in the relation between things and in movements of disruption of previously held ideas.”
So, and with this is mind, I can now re-describe this drawing as an encounter or event as being:
Sociable – and in a process of exchange with others (those who were present but also those who are and become the audience)
Relational – in that it is situated with an interdependent system of meaning making where ideas connect with those in the making, a sense of becoming
Generative – of negotiating meaning, knowledge and understanding with and through the materials to hand
It means as educators we need to:
Be open – to the complex and fluid thinking and action of children
Hold an awareness – of our our positioning as audience or partner in drawing
To recognise – that their meaning making is neither fixed or static
To act in researchful ways – to listen and look out for the connections and interdependencies that become visible (or remain invisible) between the context – maker – audience that are not always logical in order, or sequence
To adjust our pedagogy – to see drawing and other forms of making thinking visible as an encounter or event with many possible directions and not a simple linear journey from developing skills and understanding affordances to expression and communication of a singular thought.
Malaguzzi, L. No Way. The Hundred is There. Accessed at http://www.thewonderoflearning.com/history/?lang=en_GB on 5th March 2017
Craft, A. (2002). Creativity and Early Years Education. London: Routledge.
Kind, S. (2010) Art Encounters: Movements in the Visual Arts and Early Childhood Education in Flow, Rhythms, & Intensities of Early Childhood Education Curriculum. Ed. Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. New York: Peter Lang.