Author: drnicko

Awarded an MBE for services to arts-based businesses, I am passionate about generating inspiring, socially engaging, creative practice within educational contexts both nationally and internationally.

Poetry on the Serbian Hoof

Some great stories and poems from young Serbian creatives here:

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Reasons to be pedagogical part 2: We’re going to make a slave ship out of pipe cleaners and mudroc

I’m watching a visiting artist, Lisa,  in a Year 6 class  with the teacher, Sally.  Lisa has started a project on Wilberforce, making a model slave ship, an African village and percussion project. She kicks off asking who Wilberforce is and what slavery is. She introduces the task of making a slave ship which she’s going to show – at the end of the week they will have an impressive piece of work which ‘we can display’.

“We’re going to make a slave ship out of pipe cleaners and mudroc” she announces.  Is there something a little inappropriate here?  Would we hear a session in which we would hear about making concentration camps and gas chambers out of ‘pipe cleaners and mudroc’?  Here’s  a Blue Peter version I made earlier….

Lisa demos  how to make a figure out of mudroc and pipe cleaners and takes questions as she goes.   Little slave figures made out of pipe cleaners.  “we don’t want arms sticking out, they should be down at the side”.  She sets up a little production line by asking them to make 2 or 3 figures each.  The class is set on a task of making about 50 – 75 different slave figures between them. “Mould the pipe cleaner, cut up mudroc, soak it, wrap it, repeat”.  I wonder whether someone will point out that they could develop the production line and have one child specialising in moulding, another in cutting, another in soaking.

As pipe cleaner figures start emerging, a few laughs are generated by children – feet are either too bog or heads too small. “He’s hop-along… what’s happened to his arms… mine’s called Gordon, mine’s Edmund… this one’s paraplegic”.  Groups work semi-independently, teacher is engaged in co-delivery of the session, moving from one table to another as Lisa does. “wrap the mudroc tightly around the skeleton otherwise it will fall off”.  Perhaps it would have been better to make people figures who had homes first and who were then enforced into slavery – using the kids enthusiasm for the figures to its advantage rather than opt for making slaves from the beginning.  The production line aspect of this approach ironically endorse the values which make the slave trade possible.  We’re not making  a character which has a personal connection to its sculptor.  There’s one black lad in the class who is joining in with all the activities; a small crowd of white mud roc figures starts being assembled;  some of which are splendid creations, others of which are not so splendid….

The project continues through the afternoon, with no time for play time which means for some kids that making slaves out of pipe cleaners is  becoming a bit of drudgery. The figures are now to be painted black, to represent the figures seen in the picture at the start of the session.  Blackened mudroc figures start to appear on table tops and are taken to the window ledge to dry; of course, they’re various in shape, size and coverage of black paint – but they are still faceless and the products of several cheerful production lines.  No shades of black, brown or tone… End of class, and Lisa moves the furniture back to where it started before I entered the classroom.  The figures are to be placed in the slave boat which is to be built tomorrow.  So what do we know about slavery after all this?

Poetry on the Hoof: I am not a mere Biochemist

I am not a mere biochemist
I am a DNA replicator
Intent on duplicating  my Genome
Through Vivisection and Genetic trials on Mitochondrial Enzymes.
My Phage like protein coat mutates
and my skin steams with Sulphuric acid.

A poem on the hoof: thanks to Cliff Yates

Today is our preparation for tomorrow: how to be happy at the end of the world

A reader recently asked me to compose a blog about the possibility of the world ending in 2015. Mindful of the wisdom of Harold Camping who predicted the worlds end at 6pm on 21 May 2011 (and then adjusted it to October when his apocalypse awkwardly failed to materialise), one might be inclined to be a little bit circumspect about those kind of high risk predictions. Especially now we are facing another imminent global meltdown some time in the next two minutes given the claims that Facebook has gone down has heralded the next end of the world as we know it.

However, it is stating the obvious to say that for many people, the end of their world as they know it has arrrived in the last few minutes, hours and days. Many, many people of Syria, Nigeria and the Sudan have seen their worlds end many times over recently in the shape of insurrection, warfare and mass murder. Those left behind will be facing new emotional, social and geographical landscapes daily. Their worlds-as-they-know-it are frequently ending.

For the rest of us who aren’t (yet) faced with those kind of catastrophes, the end of the-world-as-we-know-it is also happening; perhaps more discreetly, in a more nuanced fashion and perhaps with less obvious public impact. But end it does. Our engagements, our relationships, our actions all bring about the end of the world-as-we-know-it sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Again, this much is obvious.

One question which arises from this is how do we face up to the ongoing end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it phenomenon? Too much change of this kind of order is surely too much for anyone to bear? Sonja Lyubomirsky from the University of California has the answer to dealing with the end of the world: be happy – today.

According to Sonya, happiness is the ability to…

1. Express gratitude
2. Cultivate optimism – visualise a future then write it down
3. Avoid obsessing over things / paying too much attention to what others are doing
4. Practice acts of kindness – more than you’re used to
5. Make time for friends – be supportive and loyal
6. Develop coping strategies – write down your feelings when youre upset – traumatic events make us stronger
7. Learn to forgive
8. Immerse yourself in activities and be open to new ones
9. Savour lifes joys – linger over rather than consume
10. Work towards meaningful goals
11. Practice religion and spirituality
12. Exercise.

So next time you’re aware of your world ending, just tick Sonya’s checklist off against your state of being. Your end-of-the-world-as-you-know-it might not all be doom and gloom. Either way, today is your preparation for tomorrow. In whatever guise it takes.

The learning space is not the classroom.

The learning space is not a classroom; not any sort of physical space, perhaps not even a temporal space but is a place in the imagination where out emotions take root, ruffle their feathers, compare notes and parade in front of each other’ a space where our own intellect is suspended, disbanded from its usual analytical and derogatory function and is asked to keep its mouth shut. A place where ‘minds meet’ or ‘meld’ in a good old Star Trek spockian sense – his was the one true learning brain where the temporanetity of now was suspended and opened up to a multiple of other and then and possible whatevers and thens… and where 2 mutual souls or spirits stared at each other for the first time and apprehended each others presence, still comprehended the other and sought to find commonalities, alignments and future forward ways of looking out together down the Start Rite road to a glorious sunset – interrupted of course by the school and educational bells , ringing us back, ranging us back to the range of the hearth, the paddock and the typewriter until we find another learning space together, where comprehension is at its fullest and most momentous.

How to evaluate such spaces, place value on them, judge them or assign an arbitrary value to them? When everything about that quivering mass of learning protoplasm cannot be measured in crude linear or spectral ways; the quiver, the moment of mitosis is only rarely visible and then, once witnessed, a true wonder to behold, it a moment which captivates, spell binds us, blinds us and makes us lose our bearings temporarily until we rebalance; for its at heart a moment of unbalance, of being disbalanced, of being gently or radically transported from our ‘comfort zone’, our moment of balance, to such an extent that we think the world is going to topple and crumble – but it doesn’t, we put one foot forward in front of the other and continue to walk or stumble into our futures, rebalanced until we encompass or are absorbed by the next learning space and its transient, immeasurable, natural, continuing and ever echoing moments.

Nevermind the stories, nevermind the narrative, lets find the moments that last for us, the moments that last well beyond any normal sense of acceptable shelf life, the moments that continue to resonate out of the time they were born into, out of the space that brought them forth, out of the here and now and understand they are of the there, the here, the now and the what if?

For there is no narrative, no story, just a bead necklace of collected moments which we interpret as story because they’re bound together by the pathetic string of our desire for coherence – but all they are at heart are momentary, wondrous, jewel like moment of quivering, transitional, change and shift. It’s being in the moment that counts that time of flow, of ebb and flow, of breathing, of pulse, of being alive.

So how to evaluate mess? Through the jigsaw, pearl strong moments of temporariness, of the moments of ‘aha’, of satori, of the despondent eureka, of the ‘my god, what have I done?’ moments.

Reasons To Be Pedagogical part 1

Bristol Nursery School, midmorning. The visual artist, Maria, has been offered two days work in the school and has persuaded the management of the school to ‘go off timetable’ and to let teachers ‘follow the children’s’ desires’ during her residency there – although the regular ‘tidy times’ and lunch time remain in the timetable. Within an hour, one teachers temper frays about being left on her own in her own area. There are usually six areas each with a designated member of staff and those boundaries are melted down today – apart from the timetable, structure, the space is a lot more fluid / chaotic. Adults are ‘following what the children want to do’ – the adults have been excused from their responsibility here, and have been denied an identity almost. The walls are as noisy as ever but less imposing – all the focus is being drawn to the kids activities.

Some young wag threw a bean bag at me in the playground which reminded me of a visit to Hindley Prison some years ago and temporarily I felt a bit unsafe, a bit dodgy. A bit iffy. The staff room is chockablock with loads of stuff packed on to chairs, tables, feels vaguely disturbing, a bit like a bad dream. Even Maria is spotting the limits with one of the children who is insisting on taking more clay from the bag with a spoon:
Femi ‘More more more!’
Maria ‘ Use what you’ve got Femi! You’ll have someone’s eye out. Be careful.’

A couple of girls are wandering in and out of the bathroom, scissors in hand – this feels a tad dangerous and I’m thinking about the consequences of one of them coming out with scissors sticking out of their head. A few teachers wander around the classroom aimlessly with cameras in hand, tourists in their own land. Following the children’s desires never felt less desireable.

The potential of potential

Creativity is often referred to as means of ‘unlocking potential’. There’s a sense that it’s something of the future, a store of source of energy in reserve. It’s a always a lot – we don’t refer to unlocking someone’s low level of potential – but we think too that once unlocked, it will have significant, positive consequences for the individual and wider society. It is by definition, unexpressed, a ‘good thing’ and unlockable.

Frustration with children may come from adults who sense a child has ‘potential’ which is not being made visible, or expressed despite their best efforts to release it. Teachers, parents and the wider family all stare at the unfortunate kid, frustrated in their attempts to ‘unlock her potential’.. If we only could unlock it, she would perform better and we’d all be happy.

On a larger scale, we’re faced with hoards of young people across the country whose potential is locked up – and so the argument goes, if we develop their creativity and enhance their cultural education then their potential will be unlocked released and possibly fulfilled. So, just what is this magical elixir, ‘potential?’

An acorn might have the potential to become an oak tree with the right conditions: but do we have our morphology lying in wait for us, planned out from the blueprint of the embryo? If so, this ‘potential’ is of quite a limited kind – the acorn has no potential for becoming an elm tree. So is potential a kind of destiny / fate – and if so, is the educators job to help us accept our fate? By providing the conditions for us to develop along a genetically preordained route? Or is there role for educators to identify and provide other routes for development? Despite providing the right conditions, the acorn may not grow – or it may start and stop at 60’ or 160’ – it’s still an oak tree – and where its stopped, has it reached its potential? And is that the time for us to walk away and leave it alone?

Is there something about the self here and how we use and view our bodies and minds? On the one hand our bodies and minds are being encouraged, our potentials exhorted and our feeble bodies being pushed to excel. Once we’re able to merge our flesh and bone with the silicon and software of computers we’ll really be able to live our potentials out and exert all our powers – and become like supermen to deal with the voracious capitalist economic appetite (Oh come on, Jones, do keep up can’t you!). In one sense the 100 Languages of Creativity are the means to becoming supermen and superwomen – enhanced versions of our feeble bodies and feeble minds (which are facets of a culture of feebleness).

Potential is also synonymous with ‘unique capacities ‘ and is also used to suggest internal reserves which are untapped / neglected – much like oil wells or gold mines. So tapping potential, in this sense, means exploiting the resources of human – cf exploiting the resources of the planet- and so here, the self has become the site for capitalist economic endeavour. Given that the education of the 19th century was useful for the industries of that time – now, in a new economic context, new skills and approaches are needed for the new industries – so instead of exploiting the planet since the onset of the industrial revolution, we’re now being urged to exploit the self for the purposes of economic deliverance of the 21st Century’s economic revolution.

So, in exhorting us to stop being feeble, and unleash our capacity to become superhuman, the calls for creativity aim to exploit the feeble self for its untapped power, energy and resources. Simultaneously despising the self, we secretly covet what it could yield up to us. We become both Jim Carrey and his observers in our very own Truman Show.

The OfSTED inspection: how to be in your very own Truman Show

The Truman Show is a film is set in a hypothetical town called Seahaven built in an enormous dome, and is dedicated to a continually running television show, The Truman Show. Only the central character, Truman Burbank, is unaware that he lives in an almost solipsistic constructed reality for the entertainment of those outside. The film follows his discovery of his situation and his attempts to escape. Central characters fake friendship to Truman, and in the case of his “wife”, bury their real feelings of disgust.

The OfSTED inspection is an example of a solipsistic epistemological position in that one’s own perceptions are the only things that can be known with certainty. The nature of the external world – schools — , the source of one’s perceptions — can not be conclusively known; they may not even exist at all. Truman himself can be viewed as an equivalent fictional school ofsted inspector who when visiting schools, tends to witness flowers decorating school corridors and toilet paper in the school toilets.

Inspection day can be presented as a lovely sunny day with bright blue skies; there’s not a care in the world, the children are well behaved and courteous, teachers well dressed and courteous, and its like this every day with pupils dutifully drinking water to enhance their learning and no-one objects to the Jamie Oliver inspired New School Dinner which has caused much wringing of hands and emptying of budgets.

But as in the Truman Show, the inspector is surrounded by central characters in the school who have to fake friendship and find methods to bury their real feelings of disgust in order to maintain the solipsistic constructed reality of the Government Inspector.

Are confidence and self esteem over-rated attributes?

The two great buzz words of human development orthodoxies – confidence and self esteem – pepper pretty much any justification for any kind of activity which has the purpose of improving humans at the heart of it.

Schools, life long learning programmes, job interviews, excuses to go to the bar can all be justified if the beneficiary’s confidence and self esteem takes a boost in the process. But is this really a useful indicator of human development? Some might say that unless the child has confidence in themselves, then no-one else will; that if we are not confident in our products and services, then no customers will be either.

This is a seductive argument but ignores the myriad of examples of artists, teachers, engineers and other human beings who are huge achievers but who spend their life time, fraught in crisis of confidence and with their self esteem at a permanent rock bottom low.  Perhaps their achievement is connected to their lack of confidence? Perhaps it’s their driving force towards achievement or a wider contribution to society as a whole?

Either way, whenever ‘confidence and self esteem’ as examples of how well a development programme is operating, we really should look harder at what that entails and what its consequences might be.