I have long been fascinated by the idea that a meaningful creative process can happen everywhere, with any material.
There’s no need to have a dedicated room with art materials. It could be just a bench in a garden, a special trolley in hospital corridors, an easel in a field, a notebook and a pencil on a train seat, a bicycle and a camera…
But then I wonder, if an atelier experience can happen everywhere, then is any place itself an atelier? And if any material can be used, then do we no longer need to choose and organize? What is the minimum necessary for it to take place?
From this reflection, here a kind of manifesto, a core of minimal conditions that can generate infinite variations – still evolving.
EVERYWHERE ATELIERMANIFESTO
Any place can become an atelier.
An atelier is created through the choice of a space-time frame and a selection of one or more materials.
This framework is a clear yet flexible boundary, in relation to the context.
Processes of exploration, transformation and interaction with materials take place through hands-on making .
Materials are active partners and the interaction is respectful of their nature.
Product and process are equal, inseparable aspects of the same experience, so that the goal is not the final work itself.
Acceptance, welcoming and absence of judgement encourage authenticity and the free expression.
What do you think of it, how does it resonate with you? Would you add or change something?
If, as I believe, it is a universal potential of every human being, we have something extraordinary at our fingertips: the ability to create an oasis beyond aesthetic geographical, social and cultural boundaries, where we can just stay for the joy of creating, looking for connections with the world and ourselves.
In the last pages of her book “The Good Enough Studio”, Nona Orbach writes:
The essence of the studio concept and activities is mirrored by our own hands. Being present with the work, with another person, and acknowledging as well that wherever you are, everything in the world is also a metaphor for so much more. A bench at the park, a kimono, a dog walking next to you wigging its tail.Maybe it is a meadow, or a place in the mind.
What if all the scattered, so different ateliers became aware of their common roots and connected to know each other and create a network? Shall we try? Join the manifesto and share your Everywhere Atelier to start mapping!
In the meantime, in June 2024, the first international study group dedicated to Everywhere Atelierwill take place in Reggio Emilia and its surroundings: six itinerant days that I am carefully preparing together with the pedagogista Laura Malavasi. During this week, 20 people from different parts of the world will meet atelieristas, artists, materials, objects, places and even animals, to build relationships through hands-on making.
The profession of atelierista is relatively recent and (at least in Italy) it is not regulated by any laws or professional association. Thus, potentially anyone can define themselves an atelierista, even with no training or experience. Loris Malaguzzi introduced this term in the educational field for the first time, to indicate a person with an artistic background working in the municipal preschools of Reggio Emilia: not an outsider expert, but a professional living the daily routine of the school with children and teachers. Another fundamental characteristic is that the atelierista designs and offers rich open ended, non-directive enviroments, to promote meaningful processes and free expression rather than the creation of specific products. Then over time, this term has extended far beyond the Reggio approach and the preschool age range.
So who is an atelierista?
I think we can define them as a mediator or facilitator with both artistic and relational skills, who supports and promotes the creative expression of each person through various materials.
And consequently, how can we define an atelier?
In my view, it is a context intentionally designed to offer materials and experiences within a time-space frame, for letting each person activate a creative process and express their uniqueness.
What skills and qualifications are requiredfor becoming an atelierista?
A double competence is required: a practical, in-depth knowledge of materials and art processes on one hand; and the pedagogical knowledge of children or any other target group on the other, together with empathy and relational skills. I distrust those who do everything for everyone: you can’t be an expert in childhood, adolescence, old age, family groups, nature, clay, loose parts and so on and so forth. I think that every atelierista has the responsibility to create her own professionalism by selecting some paths based on their own aptitudes.
Are there any specialized courses?
Not that I know of, or rather: in Italy there are a few ones, but they often propose ready templates and overly structured workshops teaching. I think that an ideal academy for future atelierista should draw on the “raw, purer sources”, by selecting various experts who excel in their field (artists, artisans, creatives, pedagogista, educators, teachers), with a great amount of time for workshops and an internship in a real working context (a school, a community center, etc.). My advice is to look for classes held by excellent art and education professionals, and to compose in this way an “ad hoc” path according to your talents, favoring quality over quantity. Then, when you feel ready, offer some workshops for making some experience in the field and learn from it.
An important tip
Getting your hands dirty, immersing yourself in matter, playing, experimenting with materials until they become so familiar that using them will be like speaking another language fluently.
Just a final clarification
This is not about integrating the teaching or educator profession with some artistic skills (which is still useful), but about building a specialized professional. And above all, no two paths are the same: each one is unique, as each person and professional story.
Every person has got a unique potential that will flourish if given the chance.
This uniqueness leaves traces and clues in many ways and context, that we can eventually reconnect for trying to see its “big picture” (or vocation or any way we want to call it).
It also reveals itself through the creative process with materials. Nona Orbach has observed this phenomenon and named Spiritual Blueprint the unique imprint of a person that emerges while creating or playing with materials. Like Nona wrote in her book “The Good Enough Studio”, it is the essence of any creator’s actions, visualizations, thoughts and feelings that are conveyed physically in the making of art.
The atelier is the “perfect” environment to let this process of self-expression flow, like an oasis without judgements or expectations coming from “outside”.
A so simple and essential statement can revolutionize our educational approach, including the way of observing and interacting: is the curriculum and the various learnings the real final goals or rather, they are tools for supporting each unique expression and research?
Are the interests of the child a tool for the learning process or rather, is the learning process a tool for supporting the interests of the child?
I suggest to adopt the second perspective, and the open studio is probably the most suitable setting for it: a space that provides a multiplicity of materials that can be freely used. Thus, the free choice of what and how to use is a crucial aspect, but not a guarantee: how is the relational space? Is it really communicating acceptance of all forms of expressions and diversity? It can be just by a glance, a word or a silence… As educators or studio managers, we should be aware of what both the physical and the relational space are communicating and offering.
So, if the open studio is actually the best solution, what about offering a selection of a few materials or thematic workshops?
I think no solution is good or bad itself out of a specific context (for example, considering the characteristics of participants, number, age, etc.). Limited conditions can stimulate creativity sometimes. So it is mainly about how (rather than what) and also for what goal.
Of course, we should always consider what is the range of choice and freedom within a specific proposal: can different identities find their ways?
For example, during an activity with stripes of paper and stapler, is a child allowed to play only with the stapler, if this is his interest? Perhaps, observing the same child in time, we will notice that he is often involved in exploring mechanisms and tools…
In fact, time is a key element: throughout time, we can connect different clues into an organic net that will gradually take a shape, constantly evolving and enriching.
Even if we offer a few hours workshop, this perspective can assist us for making that short time a meaningful piece of something bigger. Maybe we will not see the flower blooming, but we can trust the seed and give it some water, knowing that it will flourish, sooner or later.
Who am I? Why am I here? These have always been the great questions of humanity, investigated by philosophical, psychological and spiritual thinking. They are also fundamental questions in our lives.
I invite you to start this never-ending research from something very concrete, observing how the unique essence and vocation of every human being can express itself through the creative process or even playing with any material.
I am going to share my personal experience as a concrete example.
The first “clue” comes from one of my favorite playing when I was a child. Please notice that it was not any playing, but the one I was so involved and immersed in that I could play for hours. You can probably recall such intense memory as well.
In short, I liked to cut figures from magazines, put them in a bag and then take out one at a time, making each one “tell its story”. Figures started to talk to each other and a story naturally took shape.
At this point, there is an interesting question: why just that game? Why did I enjoy it ? And what did I exactly liked so much?
In my case, what I liked most was the moment when the unexpected figure entered the scene, that is when the previous balance of relationships between the figures broke and had to be reconstructed for integrating the new element.
Now let’s time jump and observe some of my recent works: collage Christmas trees for greeting cards. The technique and the materials are similar, however, here there is a product with a precise purpose that seems very far from the previous playing.
I ask myself the same question again: what did attract me? What I liked best?
I would say the composing process of the collage trees, through the combination of three different groups of figures (main body, base and decorations), while the finished product itself did no interest me so much.
In the video below, we can see another work made with paper and magazines during a group art therapy session. Here the most significant element for me was the changing connection between the figures that slided in the holes.
At this point, we can glimpse a “thread” that unites these three very different “clues”, beyond the similar materials and technique. It is a certain attraction for the combinatorial play, for the creation and the transformation of connections between a limited group of elements.
I was really impressed to realize that often, when I walk thoughtlessly, I happen to collect natural elements with holes and then move them like “windows” over textures or images.
What does all this mean, what am I looking for? Is it just a coincidence? Let’s try to give credence to whatever it is…
Once a “track” has been identified, we can use it as a “lens” to observe other occasions characterized by the same involvement and “sake of making”, even if in very different contexts. For example, what about a workshop with a completely different material, like plastic bottles?
Even here, there is a construction process of the final product by “deconstructing” the bottle into many simple shapes, which then are composed and recomposed in different ways for creating new floral-themed structures. So every time the result derives from a specific kind of connection between some elements.
Let’s go further, considering one last example of a work we can’t choose and we don’t like to do (that can often happen in rea life!). In my case, it was writing an article for a magazine specialized in education, as writing is quite hard and boring fro me.
First, I looked for a “playmate” for writing the article together, and found Laura, a very good pedagogist. Perhaps I was subconsciously trying to create a context in which my ability to create connections could express itself.
Anyhow, I invented a game with some rules and asked Laura to play: choose 5 objects that are significant from the educational point of view; choose one at a time in turn and let them “tell” their story and metaphorical meaning. While speaking about itself, each object had to connect its story to that of the previous object. We enjoyed very much this process and the final article was an adjustment of the dialogue between the objects, easy and inspiring.
I think that the relationship of this last example with the previous clues is quite evident. And I could add many other examples, but the point is clear enough by now: there is a kind of subtle thread, which can express in different contexts and ways, still remaining recognizable, adding a new aspect to a pre-existing nucleus every time.
It’s something already known that continues to evolve and amaze us.
We recognize it and rediscover it at the same time.
And of course, everyone can find their own thread, follow it and weave their own embroidery, unique in the world.
If our daimon, as Hillman calls him, can move and work with enough freedom, it will be easier for us to recognize his design, to aknowledge it and give it a good nourishment. Only recommendation: don’t close it in a precise description, since it will continue to evolve throughout life. We could perhaps define it as the mystery of what remains recognizable through change.
A toddler traces some marks with a stick in the mud of the garden. A child is playing with water and different containers in the kitchen. Some kids are drawing comics while sitting on the school bus. A ceramist models a sculpture in his studio. A man of the Paleolithic engraves an antelope in a cave.
What do these so different events have in common?
Exploring the world belongs to our nature as human beings, as well as expressing ourselves through what we find around us. It is always about a transformative relationship with the world, between inside and outside, in both directions. This happens since the very beginning in early childhood through free play, then it always remains a need and a potential for life.
The atelier is a space-time frame intentionally set up for continuing to develop and enrich this transformative interaction with the world, without other objectives than the interaction itself, letting it go wherever it will take us.
Do you remember how important it was to define a space for playing in your childhood, carefully choosing objects and stuff that were part of the game? Now, add to that involvement your actual knowledge and awarness acquired over time, and you will have a good starting point for setting up an atelier.
In the Italian educational landscape, the atelier and the atelierista were introduced by Loris Malaguzzi in the municipal preschools of Reggio Emilia. It was a revolutionary act, putting the expressive languages (drawing, modeling, music, dance, body movement, stories) at the center of learning processes.
Since then, the research about several possible “shapes” of the atelier as an experience container has continued to extend, including unconventional materials and fields: ateliers of light, of food, of gears… up to the concept of a spread atelier in recent years, coming out of a dedicated room to other areas of the school (classrooms, entrance, gardens, kitchen) and even the city (squares, shops, parks).
It is not about where. Meaningful processes can happen everywhere.
That’s why the most common objection of many educators – We do not have an extra room! – is just an apparent obstacle. The atelier is not necessarily a room.
This applies to any educational contexts, to the dimension of personal research and others fields, like the therapeutic one. Creating an atelier – for themselves or for others – means first of all selecting a part of the world by a certain kind of insight and approach, not only through physical boundaries or characteristics.
It could be a collection of tiny, pocket-objects for short bus rides; a chair, paper and watercolors in nature; a notebook and a pencil case in a bench; a garden and a camera; and other endless options.
You can create again and again endless containing “frames”: it is a world within a world, as Nona Orbach defines it in her book The Good Enough Studio. A space where we allow ourselves and others to play, transform, explore just for the sake of it, without a precise product or goal or to be achieved.
Are there certain minimum conditions to enable this microcosmos? From the point of view of space and materials, is there something absolutely necessary?
During the Covid emergency, I remember many teachers were really disoriented for the impossibility of using most of materials.
– What do we do now? We have almost nothing! – as if the ability to play, explore and create was due to some particular materials… Of course, there are differences. For example, the so-called art materials come from a tradition that makes them particularly suitable for a certain type of expressive research.
But it is the world itself, with all the things it contains, that represents a really interesting interlocutor… and also, have you ever thought of the potential of an empty space? Maybe just with a tool or a material in the center?
Gallizi Preschool, Italy (Fano)
The “atelier-bubble” is everything except impermeable, always related and connected to its context, while being safe and defined by some kind of boundaries. And a selection is still necessary: an intentional choice of some tools, objects, materials for discovering their creative potential, that would otherwise be dispersed or remain latent. Therefore, there are neither templates nor two identical ateliers.
The everywhere essence of the atelier allows us to experience endless variations of it and to enjoy creative relationships with the world, wherever we are.
Paper Atelier in a kitchen table
You are welcome to join the the next Everywhere Atelier Tour in Italy!
The point is not only what you see but how you look at, from the smaller details of everyday life to the wider macro-systems. Let’s start from a very simple game everyone knows: looking at a spot and trying to see something on it, for example on clouds or ink stains. It’s a specific human skill, called pareidolia, meaning the tendency to perceive a recognizable shape on visual stimulus with an undefined form. However, ten persons will probably see ten different things in the same spot: it’s almost obvious and yet interesting, the proof that we constantly project some parts of ourselves on the world so that our perception has always got a “relational”, not objective, quality.
You can also unusually frame a picture and then look for a title. I like using leaves and shadows, but you can start from whatever you want. For example, how would you title the picture below: the sun on the grass, a leaf in the sun or the house of shadows? What is the focus, the center around which the sense is created? Each answer could be right but the connected perception is very different.
Now take a peek from the windows of the box below: what’s inside? Try to imagine and draw the hidden object. It would be funny to compare many drawings, each different from the other and from the real object. Simple but not granted, it often concerns also other aspects of normal life, for example a discussion where you think that your idea is absolutely the only right one.
In his book The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy, Viktor E. Frankl uses the metaphor of ortoghonal projections for explaining the complementarity of the different disciplines, that are not mutually exclusive. All the points of view together can give us “a good enough” description of the object of study, by the interation of different specific focuses and approaches. How the unity of the object – Frankl wonders – can be preserved through its different, equally true, repesentations? The difference between a rectangle (frontal view) and a circle (top view) can not contradict the existence one cylinder!
What is said for vision is also true for knowledge, he wrote. We live in an age of specialists: men who no longer see the forest of truth because of single trees. Of course we cannot turn the wheel of history back, society cannot do without specialists… So what is the real danger? Are we sure it lies in a lack of universality? Isn’t it rather hidden in the claim to totality? What is dangerous is the attempt by an expert, such as a biologist or a psycologist, to explain a human being solely in biological or psychological terms.
Some years ago I had the chance to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Gerusalem. I was nicely speaking in Italian with a very welcoming monk in the Franciscan part of the Church. Around us, as in a labyrinth, there were many other chapels dedicated to different kind of Christianities, and outside the Church, many other Churches, Mosques and Synagogues all around. At some point, it was like I saw our two figures from afar and I got the impression to be inside a box that was inside another box, in turn surrounded by other ones. Each box had many windows, of different sizes and shapes, open on different shining details of whatever we call God – as limited still valuable attempts to glimpse something too wide for any overview. What amazing, prismatic picture from up there, fragmented and unified in the same time!
Now let’s imagine we are looking together through the same window: again, we would not see exactly the same picture. Our culture and language, our family and personal experiences, are all like overlapped filters through which we necessarily look at. Most of these lens are essential parts of us. Even while using our knowledge and theories for interpreting the world, we are metaphorically wearing a special pair of glasses through which we look at. I find that all these visual metaphors can become interesting tools for playing with children and investigating important concepts: changing points of view, focusing on a detail and then enlarging the picture for seeing where the detail is placed, wearing glasses of somebody else and lending yours.
Wooden glasses made with resin lenses and a special carving technique for curving the temples – Design by Francesco Bombardi
If you are aware to have several pairs of glasses available, you can choose the most useful one for every context, from time to time, maybe getting closer to the truth. Of course we need to take a stand, but far from making it inflexible. Let’s learn how to switch, not confusing one part for the whole and using our understanding for not getting trapped in it.
Finally… My heartfelt thanks to Nona Orbach, Eylon Orbach, Shari Satran and the unknown, gentle Franciscan monk, for the unforgettable Gerusalem journey we lived together. I can imagine Nona smiling while seeing “the Italian glasses” I used for writing this post.
According to my experience as an atelierista, the identity of the space that we call atelier is strictly connected to the theory of the Hundred Languages, that Malaguzzi showed in his famous poem “No way. The hundred is there”. In fact, I perceive the idea of the atelier as if it naturally arises from the idea of the child described in the poem.
So, how is a human being seen through the metaphor of the Hundred Languages? He’s like an very rich container of a great multiplicity of expressive, communicative and creative possibilities and languages, that includes verbal and non-verbal ones, held together in a holistic approach.
The first line of the poem said “No way, the Hundred is there”, meaning that this hundred-multifaceted potential is already there from the beginning, it naturally belongs to our nature as human beings. It’s a kind of treasure that actually needs to flourish, to develop, to concretize, to move from a potential to something concrete. Like everything in nature, for example a seed, it will finally make flourish its potential if just given the chance.
Why did I say if given the chance? Because it needs a good enough environment to flourish, a welcoming context where this process can be allowed and nourished. Let’s call this place atelier.
Thus, I perceive the atelier as a context specifically set up by offering some materials and experiences within a space-time frame, with the aim of making the multifaceted 100% potential of everyone express itself.
In other words, it is a place intentionally set up for welcoming the uniqueness of every child and its natural expression, and for supporting the child’s active construction of knowledge througha creative relationship with the world (that is through the offered materials and experiences as a metaphor of the world).
Atelier of “Le Betulle” preschool, Cavriago (Italy)
According to this definition, the atelier is not necessarily an extra room, even if the very first atelier of the Reggio Emilia preschools was a dedicated room (and it still is today). It mostly consists of a way to arrange the environment and of a certain approach toward children, according to the goal I have just described. For example, it could be an area within the classroom, the house or the garden; a mobile mini-atelier on wheels or even an entire school, where the regular aged classrooms have bene converted into thematic ateliers. Of course, which of these options are achievable depends on the specific context, on its needs and organizing.
So what are the required characteristics of such a place, with this goal, that we call atelier?
First of all, the metaphor of the Hundred Languages suggests that it should be multifaceted, variegated, containing diversity and multiplicity. Thus, it will correspond to the natural richness of the expressive potential of children, who play and learn at the same time, using all their senses and skills, body and mind.
Like the atelierista Vea Vecchi said, in early childhood, children do not separate the exploration of reality into separate disciplines, but from our point of view of adults, many different disciplinary approaches are present and interconnected in children researches. Are we educators able to see these multiple aspects involved in children researches?
Let’s consider, for example, a child who prepares a round cake for the birthday of a friend. First he kneads the cake, then decorates it with some small balls and some ornamental engravings made with a sharp tool; finally he divides the cake in many slices for sharing it with his friends. So here there are: modeling-tridimensional techniques and manual skills; tactile, sensory aspects; the matematical thinking (while dividing the slices); social and emotional skills (concerning friendship) and also an aesthetic visual research through the decorations.
As Malaguzzi said, the 100 languages work naturally together in a synergistic cooperation. So we should consider multiplicity as a whole, where all the elements are connected by the sense of the process of that child, relating to her uniqueness.
Hundred languages are not a list of hundred materials: they invites us to find out hundred ways to use, for example, the same pencil, instead. If we carefully observe, everyone will use it in a different way, maybe only for a detail. Moreover, the metaphor of hundred includes a variety of times and rhythms of the creative process, that can walk side by side. Every person has got his/her own pace, a personal approach to time and space: how does she move in the environment, how does he occupy a space ad intereact with the context?
How can every uniqueness be welcome within the general organizying of the educational context and the atelier?
Even if every approach is unique, while growing up each human being goes through the same universal developmental stages, that we as educators should know. I find amazing that the development of every child unfolds according to a universal, archetypical development and in the meantime intertwines, overlaps the uniqueness of that child. As Nona Orbach wrote in the beautiful book “The Good Enough Studio”, the particular expression of each individual, in their marks left on materials, is both unique and at the same time overlaps with the archetypical map of symbolism characteristic of humanity as a whole. In other words, each of us will walk through the same stages but in our own way, with our own pace, expressing a personal, unique variation of the same universal process. The knowledge of these universal processes, such as the drawing development, will help us to understand where the child is at that moment, what his actual interest and approach to drawing are, so that we can better see and support his process.
Thus, uniqueness is intertwined with universality, as two sides of the same coin, both necessary for understanding what is happening in the atelier.
Atelier of the Loris Malaguzzi Center, Reggio Emilia
Another very important element is, of course, the knowledge of materials (or of the Grammar of Matter), an essential characteristic of the identity of the atelierista – who is actually a specific professional with an artistic background.
It is not an intellectual knowledge and not optional. We should explore firsthand tools and materials that we offer to children. Only living our own creative process we can recognize, acknowledge and support children’s processes; also, we will be able to choose the right materials for suggestions and provocations. Hundred Languages does not mean doing everyday something new: it concerns the richness of the qualities (not the quantity) of the materials, the richness of their connections, the relationship between materials and children: what meanings, stories and knowledges are they creating?
Atelier of “I Tigli” preschool, Cavriago (Italy)
All the points I talked about are interlinked to each other and with the specific context. Of course each context is different, as well as each human being, and that’s why there are not “always-valid” solutions. However, we have a clear goal showing the direction and some elements I tried to outline that can orient us.
The person (of whatever age) is both the starting point and the final point, realizing the hundred per cent of the potential that is possible at the moment.
“No way, the hundred is there”, it’s just waiting. Are we able to trust it?
Finally, don’t forget that you – as educator, atelierista, teacher or parent – are never neutral, but one of the active elements of the relation. Your uniqueness is part of the process, or we could metaphorically say, part of the dance, together with children and materials, within the atelier.
I think that a direct, personal experience is the best starting point. So I went to my favourite public garden near home, where I love to walk or sit in a bench. I was ready to wonder looking at nature, as it often happens to me in that place; ready to catch pictures to share with you and to carefully observe all the process.
But that morning nothing happened, even if nature was beautiful as usual… nothing . I was a bit disappointed and suspected that intentionality was an obstacle: maybe one can’t look for wonder. If you look for it, you can’t find it.
So the new plan was to retrace some of my past walks and to find out if there were some recurring elements, a kind of list of clues, that characterizes those experiences of wonder. In other words the underlying question is: does a common denominator of the wonder-experience exist?
The first clue is easy and confirms my suspect about intentionality. I didn’t expect anything, I did not look for anything. Something just suddenly happened or I suddenly noticed something.
The second -ever present- clue is an inner empty space, needed for let wonder come in. My head was not busy or full of thoughts. Sometimes I was just too tired for thinking… sometimes it was Sunday or a daily break from work. Anyhow, I would generally call this quality a receptive, sensitive, welcoming emptyness.
Third clue: wonder happens through details and tiny things. It is delicate, it plays hide and seek and does not like haste or noises.
Clue number four: it is revealed through the senses, so it is mostly an aesthetic experience, not intellectual.
I could also state that it is connected to beauty, but the word “beauty” is too complex and general, difficult to define… What does it concretely mean? So a more useful question is probably about the recurring aesthetics qualities or topics that I associate to beauty.
I found at least three ones:
The wind or the movement of the air
A special kind of light (very warm but not too strong) that interacts with some surfaces, creating shadows and transparencies
And of course leaves. Not “any” leaf but “that” leaf, in that moment and place, seen from a precise point of view and through “that” light.
I wonder (in the sense that I ask myself) if everyone -like me- has got some specific aesthetics qualities typical of their own perception of wonder. Maybe these personal aesthetics elements are somehow connected to our roots, to the physical places where we come from or even to our very first encounters with the world.
Fifth clue: I felt immersed in what I was looking at as if bounderies become less definied and for a split second, my ego disappeared. I was not Roberta Pucci, atelierista, from Reggio Emilia, etc… but just my perception, an insightful, not-personal awareness. Also, the daily, usual perception of time changed for a little while, like a small oasis where time stands still.
This kind of feeling is as involving as fragile; it can easily desappear, specially if I want to catch it by taking a picture or a video.
So here is the clue number six: taking pictures can be an obstacle for keeping a state of wonder.
Why? I think because -for taking a picture, for example of a leaf – I need to place myself “out” of the relation with that leaf, to take an external point of view, so coming back in my shoes, getting out of the connection and looking at the leaf from outside.
This makes me think to some educational context and some teachers that overwhelm children with questions or take a lot of pictures when noticing that children are deeply involved or attracted by something… Please let’s be careful and help children to take care of their precious moments of wonder. Yes, wonder can be the beginning of a meaningful learning… but it’s itself like oxygen for our soul and not only a pedagogical tool.
Finally, a last question:where does wonder happen? Usually in nature, in my case, but perhaps there are some typical wondering-places for each of us?
Is wonder potentially everywhere, but it depends on our state of mind if we can access to it?
Can the extraordinary be hidden in the ordinary?
How can these clues and a deeper understanding of our direct experience help us to acknowledge, support and preserve the wondering experiences of children?
I would like to know to know what is your experience, hopefully adding others clues to this map. Well, we are coming to the end of this short walk… thank you for joining. I wish you to enjoy the experience of wonder and take care of it, with open eyes and heart.
This post is also available in video on RobertapucciLab YouTube Channel. A special thanks to Suzanne Axelsson for inviting me to think about this topic.
The idea of “the hundred languages” was originally born of a poem written by Loris Malaguzzi, and later became a famous educational topic. The language of poetry is made of images, metaphors, rhythm: and in fact it is not a theory we can understand at a cognitive, conceptual level and then apply.
Does it tickled some of your childhood memories? How does it resonate with your body and mind? A poem evokes specific images through which telling some universal truth. And in fact, “The hundred languages” does not concern only our everyday work with children, but our idea of who a child is and – after all – our idea of a human being.
After reading the first lines, let’s focus at the word “hundred” for a while. I think this number is a metaphor representing the great multiplicity and richness of the potential that belongs to each child. “And a hundred hundred more…”: it’s probably much wider than what we can figure out as adults. That’s why children can always surprise us, for example using things in a way that we could never imagined.
In the meantime, all the hundred and more possibilities are connected in a special way to shape the child uniqueness. In other words, every child holds within himself a unique, personal treasure of hundred. This is why not all the children should necessarily do the same experiences and activities. For example, what if a teacher proposes each day a different material to the whole classroom (watercolors on Monday, oil pastels on Tuesday, clay on Wednesday and so on), and repeats the same every year? That’s not wrong itself and children will probably enjoy, but the essence of the hundred languages is something else.
It is not a list of many different materials. It does not concern the quantity of things (“the more I have and I do, the more I will be creative”), but the variety, the molteplicity of the qualities of materials and experiences, so that every child will naturally find his own way, unique and hundred-faceted at the same time.
In the following part of the poem, something unexpected happens: they (the adults) steal ninety-nine! How is it possible?
It looks like a clear division between the child and the adult. So we may wonder: do the Hundred Languages concern only childhood? And if so, until what age? What happen while growing up, where has the Hundred gone when we become adults? Let’s try starting from the beginning. For a child, everything is a fresh, new encounter. Why should the kitchen be less interesting than the atelier?
A child is completely involved while exploring, with all the senses, body and mind. It is an holistic approach that holds together many dimensions – emotional, cognitive, social, the child’s needs, goals, stories and questions. A child plays and learns at the same time. “Playing with fun and seriously learning” is a division that adults and school make later, and I think this is what Malaguzzi was referring to.
In his book “Art, mind and brain”, Howard Gardner explains that in early years, children begin to use various symbolic skills and expressive languages in a very flowing way, easily moving from one field to another. This is because they do not know anything yet about the culture and conventional uses of things, tools and symbols. Then, after some years (according to Gardner at about 7 years old), children are becoming more interested in cultural patterns, social conventions and rules. They want to understand deeper how things really work, focusing on one thing at a time.
So we could say that growing up, there is a natural movement from an horizontal dimension of connections to a vertical dimension of deepening. In the meantime, the school tends to divide the knowledge in many disciplines. These two dimensions are both necessary, there is not an exclusive opposition: but every age, or better, every developmental stage, will have a different kind of balance between the two.
For what concern the 0/6 age-range, the horizontal direction of connection is fundamental, while becoming older and more interested in the cultural aspects, the number of connections and of the explored languages can become less and less… Of course, later in life this dimension can be hopefully recovered and nurtured by new awarness and knowledge. Anyway, I think this gap can explain why children have 100 while some adults (that remain firm in a phase of specialization) only 20, or maybe only one. We just have to be aware of it and not forget there are other 99!
So how can we (as adults and educators) set up an environment for children according to their hundred possibilities? Here is a typical proposal that is generally associated to the Reggio approach: some flowers on the table, along with sheets of paper and materials for drawing in different chromatic shades. But how can we say it is consistent with the 100 languages theory, only by looking at one picture, knowing nothing about the context within the proposal was offered? Why did the teacher suggest children to draw a flower, what was the relationship between the children and that flower? And what if some children were not interested in the flower at all but focused on the movements of a ladybug that suddenly appeared? What would you do? Do we actually observe children, listen to them, give them space or maybe are we too worried about expectations and curriculum, following the last trendy pedagogical slogan?
No template can ensure we are really following the path of the 100 languages. Why? Because every child is unique, as every teacher or atelierista and each context as well, with its specific cultural and social background. Thus, we are always joining a flexible, dynamic dance, created by the encounter of our identity (along with our pedagogical-artistic knowledge) with children’s identity, within a specific context. What wonderful, neverending intersections! So why always choosing a table with a flower, paper and drawing materials among the hundred possibilities?
“The Hundred is there”: what is the unique hundred of your children and yours? As educators, we have an active role in the process and if we join it with empathy, we will not fill the child with hundred things but provide a rich and welcoming environment where the hundred per cent potential of children will flourish.
I have always been fascinated by variations: how identity can change and remaining recognizable at the same time? In other words, while changing, at what point that identity is no longer recognizable? And what is that make it recognizable through changes? There are many ways to explore these questions using images and materials. Or even by playing with Esther. But who is Esther?
Initially, it was a paper strip, a processing waste of a paper work lying on my desk among other materials. It was casually folded in three parts and this folding gave to the piece of paper a special kind of balance so that it “seemed something”… I touched it softly: it began to swing and I began to see it alive. As its identity was taking shape in my mind, I tried to shape it with scissors and here she is: hello Esther!
Once her identity was defined, I just played with it. How does she move in the space, how many positions can she take? How can she relate with different shapes or contexts?
How can her characteristcs be transformed in order to create variations? For example: changing dimensions, material, texture, the shape of some folders or details…
In his book “Fantasia”, the designer Bruno Munari lists a number of creative techniques to transform a known object by changing its characteristics, in order to develop imagination. Here are some of his suggestions:
using opposites and antonyms (a fast turtle)
multiplying a part of a whole (a dragon with seven heads)
changing dimensions (a huge ladybug)
changing color (a blue bread)
changing material (a sponge hammer)
changing the function (a shoe used as a flower vase)
changing the context (a ship in the middle of a meadow)
The identity of every character will also evolve within a narrative frame, through encounters, stories, adventures. For example, what if Esther met a cat?
The topic of identity and its possible transformations through variations is also developed in many picture books for children. Here is an example of some pictures from “Hyppopposites” by Janik Coat, where the hippo identity is explored through different colors and textures.
The exploration of the possible variations of an object (of a character or an image) makes us investigate the limits, the potential and the essence of its identity: at what point of the transformation we can say that something has completely turned in something else? Which elements determine and affect one’s own identity? Like Munari said, “a fish with horns is still a fish”?
