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.

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.

There won’t be any shouting in the new school!

So said one principal of a new centre for learning recently. Unfortunately, some new schools, new centres for learning even, seem to ignore some uncomfortable realities about what it is to be a young person, teacher or indeed even human being.

Whatever the rhetoric of dialogue and conversation, there will be staff meetings where announcements are made followed by the brusque shouting out of names, machine gun rat-a-tat of information and further name shouting.

Whatever the architectural demands, there will still be a desire of young women and young men to occupy different spaces when it comes to their ablutions, picking off of acne scabs and throwing of ciggies down the latrines.

Whatever the politics of corridor decoration, posters will become magnets for other posters and there will always a school wag who has to make their mark on the pristine wall hanging.

Whatever the urge for academic rigour and attainment, the fibs will continue to flow cheerfully. The only school ever to have received this national award? The best performance of Grease I’ve ever seen in any school? Mr. Jones was one of the best appointments I ever made? Thank goodness we’re all one big happy community!

Sometimes, we have to give thanks to the portacabins, the empty fields and unassuming concrete of the sixties. They’ve seen many rhetorical times live and fade away and have at least left fond memories of those who once prowled the school perimeters, eating crisps and tearing their school blazers on the boundary barbed wire.

Has the last university train left the platform?

News on squeezed university places, hiked up fees and general malaise in the higher education sector is pointing to an increasingly sobering future (if that’s what you can call it) for not only young breathless A Level students but also for the many mature students who up until recently were being encouraged to rekindle their studies and equip them with the skills for the mirage of the 21st century economic oasis.

Time was when the university train at the platform had more and more carriages and travelled to many distant and amusing destinations. You can buy a ticket pretty much any time and in some cases negotiate the time the train left the station and what state the buffet car would be in. Not any longer. The carriages are shrinking or being removed; security guards are assessing whether or not you can join the train and of course the tickets have become prohibitive. Is this anyway to run a rail road?

Of course not, but neither is it the only way to provide exhilarating journeys for old and young alike. Is high quality teaching and learning the sole preserve of large institutions who are having their budgets slashed and who are raising their drawbridges? No. Is international research and development confined to the academies and conservatoires of knowledge transfer? Transparently not. Are higher education institutions the only saloons in town for students to get wrecked up in freshers week and wake up 3 years later? I doubt it.

Some time ago we set up an arts employers forum which initially was negotiating with West Cheshire College to set up a Foundation Degree. If there was ever a time when that forum needed rejuvenating it was now. There’s enough experience, expertise and knowledge in the sector to design and run our own train track. There’s far more exciting learning journeys to make and a lot more memorable transformative moments to live in a tertiary education network that doesn’t snarl up at Crewe or Clapham Junction. All we need to do are lay down the tracks and get some rail stock rolling. Maybe one rail at a time – like the best Wallace and Gromit scene in The Wrong Trousers – but we have to start somewhere!

8 pieces of advice to teachers: how to get the best out of artists

There’s plenty of advice around to artists about how to engage with schools, comply with their cultures and generally cope with the myriad of policies, initiatives and behaviours which swarm through school classrooms. But where’s the advice to schools which will help them get the best out of their visiting artists? This is a start and it looks initially at the employment process. Employing artists in schools is frequently couched in terms of preparing the workforce of the 21st century (ie children).  It’s a pity then that its the employment practices of the 19th century which are used to bring about this transformation. In order to bring schools’ employment practices into the 21st century, please try and take note of the following.

1. Provide a focused project specification in advance to the interview with the artist which is realistic and doesn’t expect aforesaid artist to deal with all your school’s long term intractable cultural problems. Don’t try and attempt to raise your SATS levels in the core curriculum on the basis of 2 hours a week.

2. When artists apply for a role in your school, however short-term, do the decent thing and reply to their application and give them an idea of when they are likely to hear the results of their application. A short email is all it takes.

3.After the interview, give some constructive feedback as to why the artist was unsuccessful. Yes, this can be difficult if you can’t articulate the reason why you haven’t employed them – but there must have been some reason, however tenuous. Also, please try and do that before the end of the month. Leaving it upto 6 months is neither use nor ornament to anyone.

4. If you have a preferred supplier, don’t waste everybody else’s time in establishing long, fake procedures which you know you won’t honour.

5. Once you do employ someone, please be aware that this is likely to be part of their freelance portfolio and that their daily fee cannot be translated into the equivalent of an annual salary. They do not get paid holiday pay, do not get paid a pension and cannot claim sickness benefit. What might look like a large fee to you has, more than likely to last a few days – and the planning and evaluation time that will also be necessary to work with your school.

6. Please try and stick to the timetable you have agreed with your artist. There is nothing more frustrating than agreeing a ten weekly project only to be informed in week seven that the class has a sponsored bouncy castle event to attend that week, so putting paid to your carefully co-constructed schedule. If your school has to fit too many activities into a limited timetable, there is something wrong with your timetable, not the artist.

7. Please try and engage with the sessions the artist is running. This means not sitting back doing your marking; not using it as an excuse to leave the room; and not being passive-agressive when asked to join in.

8. If you would like the project to include a training component for your permanent staff, warn the artist, allocate extra time or specific sessions for such training, and pay accordingly! Simply allowing teachers to sporadically sit in on/“observe” and interrupt the children’s workshop time, without allowing the artist to plan for and integrate their presence, is counterproductive for all concerned.  (Thanks to rhshelley for this fab addition!)

There will no doubt be lots more advice to follow from other colleagues; they’ll be added as and when.

Running can increase your carbon footprint! A caveat for Earth Day

Commuters who think they are preventing global warming by getting out of their cars and onto their bikes have been told to think again. Sports scientists who recently met at the International Convention for Environmental Protection in the Azores heard that the carbon dioxide generated by personal exercise could contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer above the antarctic.

In a sophisticated computer modelling programme entiitled SCOFF, scientists have proven that mass cycling in cities the size of London over one working week will wreak havoc in one acre of Amazonian rain forest.

Consequences are far reaching, not only for cyclists. Running for at least five minutes a day will increase your carbon foot print by as much as 1.00003% over the average lifetime; and mass sports like football could cause enough rainfall to flood a country the size of Wales at least once every two years. An emergency disaster committee is now reviewing the consequences that the CO2 generated by the athletes at the 2012 Olympics will have in London. Early reports that the slow bicycle race may be a surprised addition as an Olympic sport have not been denied by the IOC.