KaosPilots

I had a fascinating chat today (via Skype) with Simon Kavanagh from the Danish organisation KaosPilots. I can't remember where I heard about them but Grethe, one of our colleagues Denmark who visits Tallis each year in January on her way to the BETT show, happened to know the folks there and made a connection on out behalf.

Here's a brief introduction to the School:

The KaosPilot program is a 3-year education divided into four disciplines:

Creative Business Design
Creative Leadership Design
Creative Project Design
Creative Process Design

The students learn how to build a viable business according to their and clients visions and values, they learn how to be leaders, and how to initiate and execute creative and sustainable projects, as well as design and conduct change processes for different clients.
The KaosPilot program is a three-year, fulltime program, divided into six semesters. Each year corresponds to 60 points in the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) and each semester last 19 – 21 weeks.

The program is integrative and multidisciplinary in the sense that it draws upon different, traditional sciences and combines aspects of these with new approaches in the core disciplines and their components. The traditional disciplines are Social Studies, Psychology, Anthropology, Pedagogy, Leadership and Organization, Complexity Theory, Creativity, Design, Communication, Project Management and Business.

My chat with Simon consisted of us exchanging some news about what each of our schools was up to. I mentioned our specialist status (Arts, Leading Edge and School of Creativity), the trip to Oklahoma and our interest in new models for creative learning. I'm particularly interested in the idea that schools could become real agents of change in emerging communities, like the one on our doorstep. Simon spoke about a new collaboration with the community of Paddington in West London where a huge new social enterprise scheme is being established with their support and that of The Hub.

I've arranged to continue this chat tomorrow and will attempt to find out more about the Paddington project. Sounds fascinating. I'll report back in due course.

First meeting of the new academic year

The Creative Tallis Action Research Group met for the first time this academic year this morning. We have a great combination of new and existing members with the adults outnumbered by students. We really appreciate the students attending this morning since they would officially start school today an hour later. Some of them, in fact, only came in at all because they belong to the ARG. Very noble!

Our discussion focused on three things:

1. What do we want to achieve this year?
2. Who do want to collaborate with?
3. Who will benefit?

After a detailed and lively discussion we agreed to three foci for the year:

1. Developing a creative learning conference/Teechmeet and supporting the whole school creativity festival in the summer term
2. Establishing a creative learning project with a groups of Year 7 students (and their parents/carers) using handheld technologies. The idea would be to encourage the students to document their positive experiences of learning so that these can be shared with the whole community and inform the development of our pedagogy.
3. Working in collaboration with the maths, English and science faculties to develop inter-disciplinary creative learning strategies, possibly through a Teacher Exchange programme.

Thanks for everyone's contributions today. It promises to be a very exciting year again for us.

Creative Learning Reflections (Part 1)

The Element of Surprise


Prompted by several excellent blog posts and the practice of a colleague in a local primary school, I have been thinking about the importance of surprise in learning. The first five minutes of a lesson or meeting can be a crucial period of time in which to generate space for creative thinking. Surprising students before or as they enter the room might be a really effective strategy for challenging their expectations of the lesson. A curious sign on the door, a song or video playing in the room, a provocative question on the board, unusual equipment out on the desks ... These might all open up the potential for new and unusual forms of enquiry. I'm going to play around with these ideas over the next few weeks to see how effective they are in generating more creative thinking in my lessons.

On a related, but slightly different, note I've decided to steal an idea from a primary school colleague for my Tallis Lab lessons. She rewards children in her class who have demonstrated personal learning and thinking skills by giving them the honour of wearing a hat. Each hat has a different name, representing a specific learning skill or attribute, and they all hang expectantly on an old fashioned hat stand in the corner of the room. So, in any one lesson, children may be wearing the bowler hat of perseverance, the tiara of creativity or the beret of collaboration.

I'm off to scour the charity shops of South East London in search of my PLTS hats right now. I'm certainly hoping that my new hats will add an element of surprise to my next few lessons and help students get to grips with the notion of explicit, transferable, personal learning and thinking skills.


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For Your Frame of Mind

Hey guys! It's Chenai here and I'd like to invite you to the Mind Frames exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (details on image above). It is part of writing sessions I have been taking part in at the South Bank Center with author Courttia Newland who worked with us to create written pieces based on images from the collection at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. We also worked with fine artist Drew Sinclair  who helped us mere writers create a visual response to our written piece. Read more about the project here . 

If you are able to make it, I will be very grateful for your support. I hope to see you there!

Kat and Nathan talk about The Measurement Shop

This is a short online radio interview with Kat and Nathan from Tangled Feet about their installation, The Measurement Shop, in Unit 214 at The Elephant and Castle shopping centre.

The Measurement Shop

I've just received this invitation to see The Measurement Shop by Tangled Feet. Part of their development process involved a week long residency at Tallis where we set up our own Measurement Shop. I'm really interested in the idea of a Pop Up School at the moment, influenced by our pop up gallery on the concourse and Tangled Feet's pop up shop. I'm hoping to get a few more ideas from going to visit the Measurement Shop at the Elephant and Castle next week. Here are the details if you fancy coming along:

"We would like to invite you to tangled feet’s new research and development project The Measurement Shop...

What if experiencing theatre was as easy as entering a shop? What if a theatrical exchange mirrored a shopping exchange? What if the theatre was an empty shopping unit and the opening times were during the day with no evening performances? Who would the audience be?

The Measurement Shop is a creative exploration of how we measure complex and simple things and what effect measuring has on the measured thing. How do you measure happiness, hope and pain? As well as age, population and health? The project will never be a finished performance, rather an ongoing open exploratory experiment with the audience arriving, measuring and adding to the piece of theatre- it is our aim that The Measurement Shop tours across the UK and opens in cities up and down the country for up to a few weeks before moving on – just like a pop-up shop.

Our shop will be open:
Dates: 2nd – 5th August
Times: 2pm – 6pm (pop in anytime and stay as long as you like). We are also holding an evening of sharing on Wednesday 4th between 7pm and 8pm.
FREE

We hope you are able to come and share the work we have created and talk about its future. Look forward to seeing you there!"

Best wishes,
Lucy Oliver-Harrison
Producer


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Wallpaper

I just stumbled across this doodle/illustration wallpaper which seems like a really good idea for the new school - (I might get some for my room)
just a thought...

Billy

http://www.jonburgerman.com/Work/comments/colour_in_wallpaper/

When ideas have sex

It's not IQ that matters, according to Matt Ridley, it's how well individuals in a society communicate and exchange with each other. Another great rational and optimistic TED talk.

More ideas for wall graphics

Here are a few more great images from the Blik website featuring projects they have completed using vinyl stickers. I really like the variety of approaches, the use of abstract forms, typography, children's drawings and sophisticated digital artwork. I'm keen to employ a range of designs in the new school building; images that reward repeat viewings. What do you think?

This kind of treatment might look great in the new café where there is a long unbroken surface running the length of the dining area.

Text obviously gives us lots of scope. There could be quotations from students, teachers and members of the local community or famous artists, dramatists, musicians, mathematicians, scientists, authors etc.

I like the idea of a graphic that incorporates real work by our students. We would obviously need to start collecting this in a meaningful way for inclusion at a later date. This could be really motivating for existing students.

I love these big, overlapping abstract forms. These shapes could refer to lots of different areas of the curriculum but not in a literal way.

My partner has just completed a project in a primary school where students' poetry has been transferred to wall spaces around the building. I like the way these words overlap and jostle for attention.

Wall Graphics

Following on from my last post about the interior design of the new school, here are some images taken from the Blik website. These are custom vinyl transfers for large spaces and demonstrate how exciting and flexible this process can be. I'm still a bit concerned about durability compared with painted walls, but I'd be interested in knowing what you think of this as an approach.

Interior Design

I had a really interesting meeting today with the architects of the new school about the strategy for interior design. As well as the usual signage and wayfinding there are several large spaces in the new building that are perfect for large scale design projects. Dom Murphy from Tak! Design was also at the meeting and we are very keen for him to be involved in helping us devise a suitable approach. We currently feel that the new graphic identity should be the basis of the signage but that the large interior spaces could be more idiosyncratic, representing our specialist status as a visual arts college and involving students in helping to devise and create the work. Dom showed me the work of Lucy McLachlan (see above) who creates large scale wall graphics in monochrome paint. I wonder if we could commission a series of artists like Lucy to work with students to create large scale works of art for the walls of the new building? What do you think?

Past, Present & Future