Visual learning in the community school

Hoping for accidents:media and techniqueShirley Brice Heath and Shelby Wolf

Learning forCreative Futures

Shirley Brice Heath and Shelby Wolf

Visual learning in the community schoolHoping for accidents: media and technique

The series Visual learning in the community school tells some of the many stories of partnerships that have increased school children’s access to creative learningopportunities in 2003 and 2004. Oral language, visual literacies and strategicthinking were the focus of the research on which this series of booklets is based. The on-going study results from the collaboration of Creative Partnerships andscholars Shirley Brice Heath and Shelby Wolf, supported through StanfordUniversity and Brown University.

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BOOK INTROPUBLISHED BY CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS14 Great Peter StreetLondon SW1P 3NQPhone: +44 (0) 20 7973 5133Email: info@creative-partnerships.comTextphone: +44 (0) 20 7973 6564www.creative-partnerships.comFor additional copies of this publication, please email info@creative-partnerships.comCharity registration no. 1036 733

© Shirley Brice Heath and Shelby WolfThis book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensingagreements, no reproduction of any part may take placewithout the written permission of Shirley Brice Heath andShelby Wolf and Creative Partnerships.

First published 2004Printed in the United Kingdom

Shirley Brice Heath and Shelby WolfVisual learning in the community schoolIncludes five booklets in slipcase: – Art is all about looking: drawing and detail– Hoping for accidents: media and technique– With an eye on design: the power of presentation– It looks to me as if: talking about picture books– Sharing a common vision: community learning for

community futures

Includes bibliographical references. 240 pages.

ISBN 0-7287-1036 6 (pbk)

Visual learning in the community school narrates one year (2003-2004) in which several types of creative bridging andpartnering took place within Hythe Community School in Hythe,Kent. Behind these links were the inspiration and support ofCreative Partnerships. Central roles in this tale are played byvisual artist Roy Smith and architectural designer Ben Kelly. As resident artist, Roy Smith spent one day a week at HytheCommunity School during the academic year. Ben Kelly andmembers of his design team worked together with the children to design the reception area of the new school building. But thisnarrative is also decidedly shaped by the play, faith, humour,curiosity, and tenacity of many more characters. The childrentake on new roles beyond that of pupil as they enact, remember,and promote their triumphs and set-backs. They do so in thecompany of teachers, parents, administrators, and communitysupporters, who delight in asking questions rather than givinganswers. The storytellers are Shelby Wolf and Shirley Brice Heathwho added their questions in order to capture, count, and recountthe language and thinking behind creative work and play. Here thetwo researchers tell of the shifts in language and ways of thinkingthat lie behind the sustained power of creative learning that holdsout new roles for all partners. Each of the five booklets withinVisual learning in the community school takes readers behind therelationships, risks, and probabilities of the many adventurespossible in Learning for Creative Futures.

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In her best selling novel—Girl WithA Pearl Earring—Tracy Chevalier(2001) imagines the life of thepainter Vermeer through the voiceof a young maid. One painting is of his rich patron’s wife, and in thestory Vermeer carefully seats herat a table covered with a blue cloth,topped with an ornate jewelry box,a strand of pearls, and an inkwell.The patron’s wife sits writing and,as if in a break in her thoughts, she gazes directly at the viewer.

As the young maid cleansVermeer’s studio each day, shebegins to see the arrangementwith a painter’s eye, and sheknows something is wrong. The arrangement is too tidy, tooneat. Though she is fearful of theconsequences, the art calls her todo something she has never donebefore. She rearranges hermaster’s composition, pulling theblue cloth out and setting part of itat a slant. She anxiously awaitsVermeer’s response, and when hefinally questions her about it, she explains: “There needs to be somedisorder in the scene, to contrastwith her tranquillity… Something to

tease the eye. And yet it must besomething pleasing to the eye aswell, and it is, because the clothand her arm are in a similarposition.” After a long pause, asVermeer looks intently at the newarrangement, he acknowledges: “I had not thought I would learnsomething from a maid”(pp. 135-136).

At Hythe Community School, artistRoy Smith has learned the lessonsof Vermeer and delights in learningfrom children. He well understandsthe need for both order anddisorder in art. In his weeklysessions with the Reception, Year One, and Year Two children,

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he encourages them to takeadvantage of accidents, even towish for them. Once, when he was guiding children in theirexplorations of Monet’s waterlilies,he asked them to draw a few egg-shapes on their paper, includinghalf shapes that could drop off theedge of the page, and then coverthem with masking tape. Arthurcarefully placed all his shapeswithin the confines of the paper,and he worked meticulously tocover every inch of his ovals. Yet,Roy explained: “There, Arthur, if itgoes off the edge of the page,don’t worry. If it’s a raggedy edge,that’s all right. That’s even better.Because a lot of what you do in artshould be accidents, shouldn’t it?That’s how you learn things.”

That art, like all creative thinking, is marked by accident andexperimentation should be nosurprise. Indeed, in his discussionof the imagination, Roger Shepard(1988) explained that some of themost famous scientists, inventors,mathematicians, and musicians inhistory came to their legendarytheories and compositions through

visualization rather than step-by-careful-step verbalization. Hesuggested, “This phenomenon ofsudden ‘illumination’ has, ofcourse, been described by manyof the most creative thinkers. And acontemporary physicist has goneso far as to assert that ‘every newdiscovery originates in such asudden non-verbal flash’” (p.159).

Shepard discovered two centralpatterns in the creativity of world-class thinkers. First, at a veryyoung age, they became“engrossed in a direct, interactiveexploration of…objects and eventsand [second, they did] sounconstrained by conventional,verbalized, and rigidlycompartmentalized interpretations(or dismissals) of those objects orevents” (p. 181). With these twopatterns in mind, Shepard pointedout the need for formal skills (bothverbal and social) as well asconcentrated time in freeexploration. Although these twothings “appear to stand in mutualconflict,” Shepard asked: “Withoutsacrificing formal education, canwe find a way to encourage the

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The chase for the experiment

In a session in late January, 2004,Roy assembled a collection ofintricate shells and pieces ofdriftwood in the middle of the arttable, along with pictures of starfishand other sea creatures. Then heunveiled a medium that was afavourite among the Year Twochildren—clay. He first helpedthem create small clay bowls touse as slip pots, reminding them ofthe importance of mixing “a muddypaste that goes the thickness ofmelted ice cream for when slip isbrushed between two pieces ofclay, it binds them together.”Providing each child with arectangular brick of clay to use asa foundation, he showed them howthey could build underwaterscenes, reminiscent of a coral reef.He began with a pencil, draggingthe point through the clay brickwhile studying the swirls in thedriftwood or the undulations in theshells, filling the surface with lines.He then showed them how tomake small clay shapes to add tothe top of their bricks to make thesea life that lives underwater—

tubes and tentacles, suckers and spirals.

He demonstrated numeroustechniques including showingthem how to “roll from yourfingertips to the palm of your hand.You don’t just roll here, ’cause it willgo flat. Roll from your fingertips tothe palm of your hand. And thenyou can make a spiral just bytwisting that around. See that?And before you stick it down, youcould add some texture to it. I thinkI’ll add some spots on this one.”Roy picked up a fork and gentlypoked the prongs into his spiral togive it a mottled look. He thenlightly brushed the spiral with slipand placed it tenderly on his brick:“You see how carefully I’m holdingit? Very, very gently, so you don’tsquash it. Really gently, like it’s atiny egg. And then you place itdown where you want it to go andthen very gently give it a littlewiggle.” He showed them how tomake pods by pushing the ends oftheir pencils into rolls of clay, howthey could create patterns on their

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kind of unconstrained earlyexploration of the world thatappears to be crucial for anindividual’s development ofscientific intuition and creativeimagination?” (p. 182).

In the first booklet in this series—Art is all about looking: Drawingand detail—we presented CreativePartnerships’ artist Roy Smith atwork helping young children usethe “actual eye rather than themind’s eye” when drawing. Thisbooklet focusses on Roy’s

assertion that in art “there’sdeliberation, but you’re hoping foraccidents.” Here we will discusshow Roy taught the Hythe childrento use a variety of media in order toexpress themselves as artists. Inaddition, we’ll focus on how veryyoung students tap into a range ofabilities through art, from smallmotor skills to artistic techniques.The duo of deliberation andaccident is at the heart of thecreative process, for the bestworks of the imagination requireintention as well as invention.

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The duo of deliberation and accident is at the heartof the creative process, for the best works of theimagination require intention as well as invention.

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pods with a knife or fork, and howto attach textured tentacles wavingin the air.

Roy encouraged them to use theirtools inventively: “Don’t just dowhat I did. There are lots and lotsof different things you can do.”He showed them a small objectpunched with a series of squareholes. Pressing it into the clay heexclaimed, “Look at this! Whatcould it be? It could be all sorts ofthings. It could be an octopus’suckers, or it could be a starfish’ssuckers, or it could be just astrange thing in the water.” Oncethe children began their work, theyexperimented with their pencils tocreate patterns. Six-year-oldRogers became fascinated withthe fork, testing its prongs in theclay. He then tried the side of thefork and the rounded end of theutensil, pressing out a variety ofpatterns—dots, lines, and half-moon shapes. Lucy discoveredthat if she pressed the point of herpencil on its side into the clay, shecould create chevrons. Alexretrieved a milk carton from thetrash, drew out the straw, shook it

off, and began to make a series ofrings into her piece. Roy picked upa nail and said, “Has anybody usedthis? Try it, and see what you cando with it.”

Here, as in so much of what Roydoes, he both models and statesfor the children the ways thatexperimental ideas are born, thesense that chance can play a keyrole in our lives, so long as wekeep our eyes open to itspossibilities. It is worth pausinghere for a few moments toconsider the special role thataccident plays in both the arts andsciences (Roberts, 1989). Toooften, when teachers and parents,as well as arts institutions such asmuseums, provide opportunitiesfor children to engage with the arts,hesitancy prevails. Adults can bereluctant to let children stretchbeyond a specific direction ormodel, push beyond theboundaries of the paper’s edge, orimagine the field of wild flowers in astorm rather than under a brightsun. But it is in the beyond, withinthe unexplored, that experimentalideas are born. In the realm of

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science, accident, even withinthe confines of well-plannedexperimentation, opens doors to what could not have beenimagined.

These discoveries are oftenfragile, for they depend on threekey elements of learning. The firstof these is curiosity—wonderingwhat lies beyond the given, how farthe clay will stretch or how thinly itcan be rolled. The second is thecapacity for fascination, oftenperceived as persistence. Yet deepfascination on the part of a childcan often tax the patience of adultswho fail to see what it is in thedetail of a leaf or a crack in thesidewalk or in the shape of an eggthat captures the child’s attention.The third feature is perhaps themost elusive: it is the mobility ofthought—the tendency to seeassociations, even when suchconnections escape the attentionof others.

Again and again, scientists, as wellas artists, testify to the power of thebig three: curiosity, fascination,and mobility of thought. It is difficult

to call these “habits of mind”(Perkins, 1981). They are ratherrich deposits of human capacitythat must be seen to exist in all ofus. Adults responding to childrenhave to expect these to be there inrandom proportions and withhighly unpredictable moments ofmaking themselves evident. Whatadult has not experienced the two-year old who refuses to stopstudying ants crawling in and out ofa tiny mound of sand? Moving thechild homeward toward supperrequires a battle of wills. Aschildren grow older, it is difficult toremember that their capacity forfascination remains, as does theirtalent for mobility in their thinking—being able to range across a widevariety of experiences to see thelikes and differences, the patternsand disconnections. Both of thesedepend on continuities of curiosity.

But what do these three features oflearning and of seeing the worldhave to do with accidents? Whywould Roy tell the children theymight even “hope for accidents?”The human brain thrives on takingin the unexpected, so long as the

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Scientists, as well as artists, testify to the power of the big three: curiosity, fascination, and mobility of thought.

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absence of predictability does notbring insecurity or a threat of harm.Alert, alive, and ready forconnection and association, thebrain jumps at the challenge oflinking up what does not seem tobe linkable. Such a search and thesense of connectedness thatcomes from the pursuit cangenerate the pleasures of “flow”—being fully aware of the content ofexperience (Csikszentmihalyi,1996). Accident or the unexpectedduring opportunities for beingcreative encourage flexibility,perception of new possibilities, anddiscovery beyond the fixed ordisciplined. Brain researchershave shown that all of us certainlyhave the capacity to focus ourconcentration, as well as thecapability to let our mind roam orsearch about in an unfocused way.

Those who come to beacknowledged as highly creativehave to be able to step back andbecome freewheeling in theirthoughts. They are not those whoremain focused narrowly to theexclusion of loose exploration.However, they can call on

concentration and focus when theyare pulling ideas together andbuilding a synthesis of all theproblem-finding they have beenexploring. Thus, the brainfunctions in very different ways invarious phases of work in acreative process. This flexibilitygives impetus to the finaloutcomes. Being open to“accident” along the way requires a special kind of alertness—inperception as well as mentaldexterity—that can make all thedifference between the ordinaryand the extraordinary.

Stories of scientific inventions aswell as discoveries in the fields ofmedicine, astrophysics, andgeology always include the tale ofthe misconstrued fact, the randomidea, the flash of inspiration, thefortuitous mistake. Theseoccasions push the scientist, justas they do the artist, to see newimplications, to stretch the possiblebeyond the obvious, and tospeculate on possibilities thatcannot now be entirely controlled.James Austin (2001), a physician,scientist, and philosopher, calls the

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The brain functions in very different ways invarious phases of work in a creative process.

mix of accident and chance thatmust be present in all creativeendeavours “the lucky art ofnovelty.” Twentieth-century artistsand scientists, from Picasso toEinstein, provide tens ofthousands of quotations thatcelebrate the flash of insight, thepower of chance, and theexploration of the mystical or thatwhich lies beyond logic or reason.

What may be most difficult forthose who see themselves as“trained” or “disciplined andrigorous” is that in the sciencesand the arts, those whose worksare most respected never claimonly training or discipline. Accident,

chance, play, novelty, and otheraspects of learning such as“mystery,” “fun,” or “sheerabandon” have to be the constantpartners of rigour, depth ofexperience, and body ofinformation. Sir AlexanderFleming, a scientist best known forhis powerful insights into biology,said of his work with moulds, thebasis of early understanding ofantibiotics: “There are thousandsof different moulds and there arethousands of different bacteria,and that chance put that mould inthe right spot at the right time was like winning the IrishSweepstakes” (quoted in Austin,2001, p. 86).

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Messages in the media

When you think of childrencreating art, you probably think ofcrayons—those waxy, paper-wrapped, and pungent sticks ofcolour arranged in boxes ofvarious sizes and shades. Indeed,crayons, along with pencils andrough off-white paper are thetypical tools of the young artist’strade. Yet, Roy rarely had thechildren use crayons. Instead, heintroduced them to a variety ofmedia, ranging from oil pastels, towatercolour, to monoprinting, totissue paper collage, to clay.Within a single day, he wouldintroduce the shifting sessions ofchildren to different media. Amorning group would draw asheep’s skull and then transformtheir drawings into fabric paintdesigns, while an afternoon groupwould draw the same skull, but endtheir session building shapes inclay. Another day, one group wouldmake Monet’s lilies floating on awatercolour pond, while an afternoon group would make their lilies mixing watercolour withoil pastels.

Providing an array of mediaexpands children’s artistic palettes,for just as an artist chooses colourscarefully, different media suggestdifferent possibilities. Some artcritics believe that media can limitthe message. As British arthistorian E. H. Gombrich (1980)suggested: “The image cannotgive us more information than themedium can carry” (p. 248). Butthis statement may limit whatartists can do when theymanipulate media to match theirintentions. As Perry Nodelman(1988) argued:

Black lines on white paper cannot reveal the colour ofobjects in the real world, andblock prints reveal texture onlywith difficulty; collage inhibits the creation of depth, andwatercolour in its translucencycreates the impression of lightmore readily than tempera…While the characteristics ofmedia certainly influence theway they are used, they do notnecessarily limit artists to

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particular effects… In fact, themedium itself is not themessage. The medium is neverthe message. Having chosen amedium to help them achievethe attitude they want tocommunicate toward theirsubject, artists must then usetheir knowledge of the varioustechniques…in order to makethe medium evoke that attitude(pp. 74-76).

Although Monet’s (1906)Nymphéasis oil on canvas, the watercoloursand pastels Roy provided thechildren lent themselves easily to Monet’s essential motif— “themirror of water… constantly beingmodified by the changing skyreflected in it, which imbues it with life and movement.”

Roy began this lesson by showingthe children several of Monet’s

The messages of water andreflection, however, are not theonly signs in the art, for artists alsoreveal themselves in how theywork with media. When the YearTwo children finished their work,Roy chose two very differentpieces to talk about with us. Hebegan with Jake’s waterlilies:

This lad, Jake, didn’t stick with one particular idea. More thanthe others, he moved across andmoved sideways and trieddifferent ways of handling thebrush. Different ways of handlingthe paint. And most of the otherchildren were, as they wereworking, allowing things tobecome accidental, which is fineThat’s what I asked them to do.But with Jake, he began to makethese sort of beautiful rivulets ofcolour, and very particular anddefinite brushstrokes, and thenworked around those using othercolours. [Roy pointed to themiddle lily pad on the left andexplained:] Here he appliedcolour and applied colour andapplied colour. And then thereare unfinished areas or

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waterlily paintings. They discussedthe colours— especially thedifferences between hot colourslike red and orange and coldcolours like blue and green. Roythen took a large sheet of whitepaper and sketched some eggshapes and covered them withmasking tape. Then in alternatingstrips of blue and green, hecovered the paper, brushing rightover the masking-taped shapes.

Roy: Now why am I painting it blueand green?

Kai: Because the water is cold!Roy: The water! What are the

green bits in the water? Whathappens when you’ve got treesgoing all around the pond?

Alexandra: Oh, yeah! Reflections.Roy: [Roy then peeled off the

masking tape.] What’s happened?Chorus: Lily pads!Roy: We’ve got lily pads. How did

we manage to get lily pads!? Alexandra: ’Cause of the masking

tape.Roy: Yes. It acted just like batik

does. It’s like a resist, so thepaint stopped when it came tothe masking tape.

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unrealized areas, though he didthink to himself, “Well, this isdone.” I really like the way that it evolved. It’s a lovely piece ofwork, but particularly because of its deliberateness.

He then moved to another child’swaterlilies:

Ermira was really, reallyimpatient. She kept on saying“Are we finished now?” And I waslike “Have you tried this little bitover here? Could you do a littlebit more colour there?” Or “Whatcolour haven’t you used?” Tryingto think of different ways ofhelping her get back into it. Soshe stayed there all the time butshe needed a little bit ofprompting. By pointing out otherthings that the other children haddone. By placing colours next toher. By encouraging her for whatshe’d done in certain areas, andsaying, “You did that bit really,really well.” So one reason Ipicked this is because it doeshave a certain impatience with itas opposed to Jake’s, which isdeliberate. This is a lot more

spontaneous. It’s controlledbecause she decided where thecolours would go and where thetape would go, but she wasn’ttoo worried about exactly what itwould look like. And I think thatthat’s quite consistent withMonet’s work as well— there’sdeliberation, but you’re hopingfor accidents.

Ermira’s impatience is best seen inher circular squiggles of oil pastel,particularly on the right side of herart. It’s as if she wanted to add thedarker colour to balance what shehad achieved on the left, but ranout of steam. Still, it’s a lovelyeffect, for it replicates the swirl ofmoving water. Her deliberateness,on the other hand, is revealed inher careful application of yellowand light pink oil pastels dotted inthe centre of her lilies, whichconvey the sparkle of light. Thus,the combination of considerationand spontaneity reveals thereflection of light in moving water,but it also captures the style of theartist herself.

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coloured paper, marking theedges, and then folding it to fitcoloured pieces within the black lines.

Because Mondrian was originally alandscape artist, Roy emphasizedthe potential options for scenerywithin the abstract art. A large bluesquare could be a lake and arectangle of red could be a field ofpoppies. One child suggestedmaking “ a yellow field, like apatchwork yellow one.” Roy thenencouraged the children to do theirown landscapes. Most beganplacing their black strips down invertical and horizontal lines, butArthur began to lay his pieces outat a slant. When Roy noticed this,he commented: “It doesn’t have tobe left or right, it can be any whichway.” Arthur regarded Roy intentlyand said he was making a flag for acastle. In response, Roysuggested that a flag could stillrepresent a landscape “’cause it’sthe place where you live.”

Indeed, Arthur lived in a world withmuch admiration for castles andkings, moats and high towers, but

the real world with its hustle bustleand endless transitions was muchmore frightening. Diagnosed asautistic, he initially found schoolterrifying. Early Years ManagerNicky Hill explained that in hisbeginning days at Hythe, “Arthurwould not talk or make eyecontact. He used to lie on the floor.He couldn’t cope with any noise.He couldn’t cope with any changein activity.” Yet, watching Arthurwork with Roy, Nicky was struck bythe “intensity of his listening andhow he was joining in theconversation.” HeadteacherCarolyn Chivers agreed: “So whatwe have to do with Arthur is helpget him through everything that’snew. When he came to us in theReception Year, he came in with nolanguage at all. We had to use apicture exchange system for all hiscommunication, and yet he’s nowjust one of the group.”

Arthur’s ability to blend in andparticipate was particularlyimportant because, on the day hemade his flag with Roy, his former"preschool special needs service"worker was visiting. She had been

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Laying down the artist’s lines

Using the work of Piet Mondrian,Roy brought the Year Two childrento yet another medium—usingstrips and squares of paper withsticky gum on the back like astamp to create abstract art.Though quite famous in his earlyyears for his landscape paintings,Mondrian later rejected reality infavour of rigid rules of abstraction.He created canvases divided byvertical and horizontal black lines,and the resulting rectangles wereonly occasionally filled with colour. As Hannah Höch (2004)explained, “Everything in his lifewas reasoned or calculated.He…could never bear to seeanything disordered or untidy. Heseemed to suffer acutely, forinstance, if a table had not beenlaid with perfect symmetry.”Clearly, he would not have likedVermeer’s fictional maid interferingwith his compositions.

When Roy introduced Mondrian’sabstract art to the Hythe children, itwas his first session with the YearTwo pupils in Ms. McIllroy’s class,

and it represented an unusualbreak in their routine. Rather thanjoin their teacher for a story andthen go to their tables to do thework of the day, a small group ofchildren sat with Roy at a backtable. Arthur came quietly and satdown, watching closely as Royshowed prints of Mondrian’s workand they discussed his art. WhenRoy began to paste the black, thinstrips down on a larger sheet ofwhite paper, Arthur commentedthat it looked “like a flag.” OnceRoy finished placing his blackstrips vertically and horizontally onthe paper, he showed them the“tricky bit”—measuring the

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Watching Arthur work with Roy, his teacherscommented on “the intensity of his listening and how he was joining in the conversation.”

Composition with Red, Black, Blue, Yellow and Grey.1920. Oil on canvas 51.5 x 61cm © 2004 Mondrian/HoltzmanTrust. c/o hcr @ hcrinternational.com

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assigned to Arthur and his familyand had helped him make thetransition to Hythe from his specialschool. She sat quietly on the edgeof the group, watching Arthurdiscuss the art and work on hisflag. When she left, she went toCarolyn’s office and marvelled athow “he didn’t stand out.” AsCarolyn later explained, “she hadtears in her eyes because thedifference was just incredible.”Certainly Arthur’s transition did notoccur in this one session. But thefact that Roy’s presencerepresented a significant shift indaily events, including theintroduction of very new things toobserve, discuss, and manipulate,made Arthur’s engagement all themore powerful, and it stood out toall who knew Arthur well.

In working on his flag, Arthurseemed to match the intensity ofhis listening with keen attention tohis art. Unlike the other childrenwho worked with basic squaresand rectangles, Arthur worked withdiagonal lines in his flag. Hischoice meant he had to cut outeven more difficult coloured

inserts. He measured and foldedand clipped the paper with care,trying hard to match the whitespaces left by the black lines. Still,he left some white space, for asRoy suggested, it was helpful toleave the viewer with something“for the imagination.” As the otherchildren finished and left for recesson the playground, only Arthurstayed and continued to work.Later, Roy discussed Arthur’s flagwith us:

Any art wants to evoke anemotional response. It’s likeArthur with this flag that heproduced. I found it fascinatingwhat he was doing. He stayedvery regimented and patterned,but then the artiness came inwhen he started applying colour.Obviously, when I was giving thedemonstration, he was seeingthese shapes as connected withthe flag. But then that extendedoff and became something more.

As an artist, Mondrian was knownfor his “icy brilliance.” Still, criticMarc Aronson (1998) argued:“However cool and precise his

Just as artists lay down the lines to create their art, so too do they lay down the details of theircolourful lives.

forms, the humanity of the painteris never lost” (p. 107). When theDutch artist left Europe for NewYork, he became fascinated withthe city and the music that markedit—jazz. Aronson wrote:“Mondrian’s glacial art was not somuch melted by the city as it wasbroken into tinkling cubes. Inreturn, he showed New York howalive, how brimming and spillingover with colour it already was” (p. 109). For Arthur, the real worldoften seemed chaotic andfrightening. He tried to control it by

avoiding transitions—laying out hisdays in neat and predictable lines.Still, he had slowly learned toadjust to the lively community ofHythe, brimming over with art andactivity. And as he added colour,creating an emblem for his castle,his own “artiness came in,” andhis flag was broken into tinklingtriangles, alive with colour. Thus,just as artists lay down lines tocreate their art, so too do they lay down the details of theircolourful lives.

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Breaking through

Let us imagine that Vermeer’sfictional maid truly rearranged thecomposition of his painting. Heruntrained eye allowed her to see the possibilities of disorder.Vermeer saw the logic of her artful eye. We could think of the maid’s movement of the artist’sarrangement as a “breakthrough”for him and the particular work ofart. Such events do just as theirname suggests: they break thoughthe usual boundaries, rigours, orexpectations. The moment of suchbreaking through often carries a“Eureka” effect in which the artist,thinker, scientist, inventor, ornavigator suddenly sees whatcould not previously be seen. “I have found it!” marks recognitionof the sense of somethingpreviously hidden from sight nowbrought into clear vision. Withinthis series of booklets, there ismuch emphasis on seeing,looking, and perceiving with care.

Thinking about accident does nottake us away from the importance of any of these ways of keeping

our eyes open. Yet as one growsolder, it becomes more difficult toremember to look closely and toexpect the unexpected. Most of usas adults lack the mental flexibilityof small children. We are slow tosee how accidents bring invention,give a shove to thinking, and takeus out of where our thoughts havebeen into an insight that cantransform the work before us.

Moreover, accidents can provevaluable for they expand the spaceof possibilities that we may think ofsetting out and exploring. In thisexpansion, we jump across realmsor zones of thinking, or we look forpossible openings within a givenspace. For example, when Royonce offered the Receptionchildren an opportunity to draw ahuman figure with the aid of amovable toy model, they drew withmuch greater detail. The smallflexible model, a mere child’s toy, isthus a breakthrough stimulus or anaccident in terms of what mightusually be thought of as the spaceof possibilities for learning about

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the human form. Anotherbreakthrough occurred when Royintroduced the children to thesheep’s skull, asking them to followthe intricate lines and see whatthey could see. As they drew, thechildren saw a dog with a collar, acastle, and a big fat chicken. Theirimaginations gave form to imagesboth within the boundaries andbeyond the lines.

Roy’s lessons always includedopportunities for the children todraw real objects, look at anddiscuss professional art, and moveinto different media. The day hebrought in driftwood and shells,Roy reminded them to really lookwhile they drew: “Look at the way it flows and bends and turns. Draw what you see, looking up and down, up and down. And lookat the lines. This is more like a line.That is more like a long river, a long squiggly river, and there itsquiggles again. See if you candraw what’s happening with those lines.”

Harry drew for a while, but then hestopped and went off in search of a

rubber to erase a portion of hiswork. Roy stopped him, remindinghim that rubbers weren’t allowed atthe art table. He looked at Harry’swork and exclaimed, “There are nomistakes in that at all. Carry on!”Roy told us that in the past, he’dworked with older children whowould draw and then “rub it out,rub it out, rub it out, and in the endthere was nothing! You couldn’teven see what they’d learned. So after a while I learned to takethem away.”

Once the children hadaccomplished their intricateshapes of shells and driftwood,Roy introduced them to the art of Hundertwasser, an architect,ecologist, and painter, whobelieved that a straight line was the enemy. About his artisticsuccess he wrote:

It is difficult to explain how Isucceeded. Certainly not byforce,also not by reflection, andnot by intelligence, and notnecessarily by intuition, butrather like walking in a dream.The work of an artist is indeed

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Accidents can prove valuable, for they expand thespace of possibilities.

very difficult because it cannotbe undertaken by force,diligence or intelligence. I meanthat everything else in life can be done with energy, assiduity and intelligence, but with these things achievements in art areimpossible.

Roy showed the children several paintings in a book onHundertwasser (Rand, 2003), andthey talked about how the artist“used lots of lines and lots ofcolour.” The children immediatelynoticed the little images within thelines—cars, clouds, a big hill withlots of little trees, people, andbuildings. When Roy asked thechildren to compare the swirl ofshapes in the Hundertwasser art to the driftwood on the table, somebegan to trace their fingers aroundthe art following the trail of lines,while others did the same with thedriftwood and the shells.

Roy then showed them anotherdrawing technique, one wherethey would draw very quickly, fillingthe page, even letting their drawingspill off the paper. He showed them

how he was “drawing from myelbow to my shoulder. My wrist islike I’ve got a plaster cast on it. So draw all of these shapes in ‘till youfill the paper. Very quickly! Andyou may find this easier to dostanding up.” The children eagerlyleapt to their feet, and with stiffwrists they sketched the driftwoodand shells, their drawings lessintricate but larger than life. Roythen introduced the shift in media,showing them how to go over theirlines with oil pastels, choosingfrom a rainbow of bright colours.Reminding them ofHundertwasser’s work, Royencouraged them to use thepastels to draw shapes withinshapes within shapes—creating alabyrinth of lines. Harry shouted,“I’m getting the hang of this, I am!”Laughing, Roy then demonstratedhow to fill the white spaces in theirwork with fabric paints, whichflowed over the page except whereit met the resist of the oil pastels.

James drew one of the seashells,and when the outline was done,Roy showed him how he could add more lines, drawing cross

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hatches with yellow oil pastels inthe space in the lower right.James immediately began toexperiment, adding individualdesigns in each space—splotches,dots, circles, chevrons, andcrescents. He filled in his seashellone section at a time, drawing bluecrescents in oil pastels and thenfilling in the white space with yellowfabric paint. When he created pinksplotches topped by red, hestopped and looked at the effect,and then called to Roy, “It didn’twork!” Roy showed him how tocreate more contrast between thetwo media and later explained,

James’ work was very clear. He’sobviously thinking quite solidlyabout what colour’s going to workwith another colour. Like whenhe put this one over the top ofthat and said, “It didn’t work.”But it did work, didn’t it! It didn’twork in the way that he wanted itto, because he’s working in thesame tonal range using the pinkand the red. So then when Ishowed him the green, that musthave done something becausethen we have this gorgeous red

and then shocking blue, and thenthis orange and green that are so fantastic together. And thenwhen he did the rest of it in purple,it really makes it stand out.

Cognitive psychologist DavidPerkins (2000) tells those whowould learn from accidents toconsider four key operations ofbreakthrough thinking: roving,detecting, reframing, anddecentring. Serious considerationof just what each of theseoperations might look like may helpguide those who want to inspire andinstill creative learning. “Roving”takes our minds on a wander.

Exploring widely and deliberately innew or out-of-the-way areasamounts to mental roving, lettingthe mind wander away from theimmediacies into other realms.Such an operation can be inspiredby the opportunity to represent orreflect such wanderings of themind. Within Roy’s art interactions,his questions encouraged thechildren to roam back through theirown experiences, findcommonalities, and stretch ideas.

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...consider four key operations of breakthrough thinking: roving, detecting, reframing, and decentring.

“Detecting,” “reframing,” and “decentring” come to us as termsmore familiar in learning than“roving.”Therefore, it is important toremember that without roving, noneof these other three really matters. If one is allowed to “detect” onlythat which others have alreadydiscovered or only that which is inthe head of the teacher or artist,then the territory is not expandedinto the creative. One must thenwander, see, and then encircle insome way what it is that has beenperceived as the breakthrough.

The idea of “reframing” captures acapability that work in the artsprovides in practice. As Royallowed the children to paint, sculpt,narrate stories, and as theyexplained their work to Roy, visitors,parents, teachers, and others, theypractised reframing ideas andgenres. “Portrait” came to have newmeanings that could include notonly the works of Van Gogh andMurillo, but also the wider world ofportraying—to depict in words, todescribe graphically, or to representdramatically. And abstract art—

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... working away from the centre we can bringfreshness, deeper insight, and new revelations.

especially through wide-rangingexperimentation with multiplemedia—gave the children anopportunity to perceive, pull out,and portray particular features.Gombrich (2003) explains that themodern artist is always trying tocommunicate an “intense feeling forthe uniqueness of a thing made bythe magic of human hands” (p. 585). James’s patternedseashell floating in a purple seaclearly represents a mollusc, but it is also much more.

“Decentring” represents mentalactivities that may be as difficult toaccept within children as “roving.”In both cases, adults have to bewilling to let go of the idea ofmaintaining control over wherechildren’s thinking might stray.“Off-topic,” “too far afield,” “wayout,” and other such terms comeup often in the work of schools.However, in the sciences and arts,going out of the very centre of whatmay be of current focus can oftenbring new insight to the problem athand. Narratives of scientificbreakthroughs tell us again andagain that working away from

the centre for a while can bringfreshness, deeper insight, and new revelations. It is worthcontemplating why it is thatscientists who find themselvesmaking no progress on a problemwill often take time off to work onan arts project or go away fromtheir ordinary setting to viewnature, visit art galleries, or listen to music.

When Jake did his Hundertwasserrendering of the driftwood, hestruggled. Often meticulous in hisdrawings, Jake resisted more free-wheeling forms. Roy explained:

He doesn’t like it, probablybecause he lacks control whendoing abstract art. So he variedbetween doing chaotic andcompletely instinctive work andthe visual. And I think he washaving a bit of a fight with that. At first, when he started to applycolour, he was quite clumsilyholding the brush and just sort ofdragging it across, and then hestarted to be more sophisticatedand decided where certaincolours went. Toward the end,

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it was difficult to get him off thetable because he wanted to doeach little tiny bit. So in the end hewas very meticulous in what he was doing.

It could be the case that Jake’sclumsy meanderings with the brush represent his own need for decentring—to metaphorically

walk away from the work and then return refreshed, ready to apply the oil pastels and fabric paint withdeliberation. This drift away and return to the deeper patterns in the driftwood allowed Jake to behighly experimental in line as wellas colour.

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Summary

In one of his sessions with clay,Roy introduced the children to thework of two British potters, IanGodfrey and Bryan Newman, whooften made small cities perched ona ring or an undulating bridge. Thebuildings feature multiple windowsand sometimes have the look ofwatchtowers and turrets, theirroofs topped with onion domesand chimney pots. The Year Twochildren built their cities on a ring ofclay, and in this same session, theyalso built clay faces about the sizeof their hands. When Roy took thechildren’s work to the kiln, he firedboth of Katrina’s pieces togetherand the face toppled into the town. Struck by the uniqueness of Katrina’s work, we asked herto explain:

Katrina: Well, I made a facewith Roy, and I made lots ofbuildings on a circleunderneath. But I didn’tactually stick them together.They were actually separatepieces of work. I think they gotmixed up and got stuck together.

Shelby: So it was an accidentthat the face got mixed up inthe circle of buildings. What doyou think of it?

Katrina: I think it’s quiteinteresting. It looks like agiant’s face is just peeping outfrom behind all those houses.It looks very strange stucktogether. It looks like his noseis stuck on the bridge.

Shelby: It looks like he’s justpeeping over that bridge.

Katrina: Yeah, but in a way I likeit because it’s like a giant’sface. To me, the face is justlike as big as my hand. But if youwere that small, ’cause that’show big buildings really are, andif you were that small, that wouldbe a giant.

Shelby: Do you think it’s a friendlygiant or a grim giant?

Katrina:Afriendly giant.Shelby: Why do you think so?Katrina: Because it’s just looking

to see what people are doing. It’s interested in what people are doing.

Shelby: Tell me about the buildings.

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Katrina: Well, that’s a castle. Notthe actual castle, but the wallsaround the castle. And these arejust normal buildings. That’s aflat and that’s a mansion andthat’s a bridge.

Shelby: This was an accident, andyou didn’t expect it to look likethis, but now it’s done. Do youfeel like it was a good accident or not a good accident?

Katrina: It’s an interestingaccident.

Both artists and scientists arehighly accomplished at switchingperspectives (Booth, 1999),roving, detecting, reframing, anddecentring—looking at somethingin a new light, and waiting forsomething interesting to happen.

In art, some accidents occur in themix of media—watercolours meetmasking tape, fabric paint meetsoil pastels, pencil meets clay, andthe possibilities are open andendless. Accidents happen in thedrag of a paintbrush across thepaper—giving the artist a rest andthen renewed energy. Some occurwith seeing the potential in objects,

pressing the prongs, the side, thehandle of a fork into clay. Stillothers happen with no help at allfrom the artist, a face peering outfrom a town, but it is up to the artistto see its possibilities.

The opportunity to look for andeven hope for accidents camethrough most strongly in the “as if”possibilities that Roy’s commentsand questions inspired. As we lookback through his language with thechildren and their language as theygrew more confident in talkingabout their own work, they movedin and out of the metaphoricalworld of “as if.” Roy asked, “Look at this! What could it be?” Hesuggested, “Try it, and see whatyou can do with it.” And when achild veered away from thehorizontal and vertical lines setbefore him and headed off into thediagonal, Roy said, “It doesn’thave to be left or right, it can beany which way.”

It has been mentioned that adultsin interactions with childrensometimes hesitate to decentre,but Roy encouraged it, sometimes

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to the consternation of the childrenthemselves. With regard toKatrina, Roy said, “I’ve noticed thatif I do something that is a bit tooabstract and chaotic, off the wall,or without rules, then she doesn’tnecessarily become upset, butshe’s not very comfortable with it.”Still, she was learning, and ratherthan fuss over the face in the midstof her town, she entertained thepossibility that some accidentsmay have merit. Indeed, theymight even have a story inside.

This particular story of children andart demonstrates the necessarymix of media and method, ofintention and invention, and ofthose with an artful eye willing totest the vision of professionalartists like Vermeer. From diagonallines, to the patterning of chevronswith crescents, to the imprint of amilk straw pressed into clay, thechildren held out to one anotherand to those who had the privilegeof observing their work thewonders and the wanderings inhoping for accidents.

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References

Aronson, M. (1998). Art attack. Boston, MA:

Clarion.

Austin, J. H. (2001).

Chase, chance, and creativity:

The lucky art of novelty. Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press.

Booth E. (1999)

The everyday work of art

Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks

Chevalier, T. (2001).

Girl with a pearl earring.

London: Penguin Books/Plume.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity:

Flow and the psychology of discovery

and invention.

New York: HarperCollins.

Gombrich, E. H. (1980).

Standards of truth: The arrested image and

the moving eye.

Critical Inquiry, 237-273.

Gombrich, E. H. (2003).

The story of art.

New York: Phaidon.

Höch, H. (2004).

Artcyclopedia.

Retrieved February 11, 2004, from

http://www.artcyclopedia.com

/artists/mondrian_piet.html.

Hundertwasser, F. (2004). Hundertwasser

on Hundertwasser. Retrieved March 25,

2004, from http://www.kunsthauswien.com/

english/malerei.htm

Monet, C. (1906).

Nymphéas.

Retrieved February 11, 2004, from http:

//www.intermonet.com/

oeuvre/nympheal.htm.

Nodelman, P. (1988).

Words about pictures:

The narrative art of children’s picture books.

Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

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Roberts, R. (1989).

Serendipity: Accidental

discoveries in science.

New York: Wiley.

Shepard, R. (1988).

The imagination of the

scientist. In K. Egan &

D. Nadaner (Eds.),

Imagination & education

(pp. 153-185). New York:

Teachers College Press.

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Perkins, D. (1981).

The mind’s best work.

Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.

Perkins, D. (2000).

The eureka effect: The art and logic of

breakthrough thinking. New York: W. W.

Norton.

Rand, H. (2003).

Hundertwasser.

London: Taschen.

Photographs by Gary Brownewww.garybrowne.com

Visual artist: Roy Smith smithroy@ntlworld.com

Architectural designer: Ben Kelly Designinfo@bkduk.co.uk

Written quotes courtesy of:(c)(2001) Chevalier, T. Girl with a Pearl Earring.Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Art Attack: ABrief Cultural History of theAvant-Garde by Marc Aronson. Textcopyright (c) 1998 by Marc Aronson.Reprinted by permission of ClarionBooks/Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Pictures courtesy of Page 5: © Corbis/Francis G Mayer Lady in Waiting by Vermeer

Page 19: © Corbis/Christies' ImagesNymphéas by Claude Monet

Page 26: © Mondrian: tba - awaiting formalcopyright line

Design: Ranch

Creative Partnerships is a nationalgovernment-funded organisation,managed by Arts Council England,committed to the positive development ofyoung people through cultural practiceand creative learning. The aim is to helpdevelop the imaginations and skills ofyoung people through meaningful andsustained cultural experiences in theformal and informal education sectors.Creative Partnerships currently works in25 areas of England with a range of cultural practitioners, creativeindustries, businesses, and localgovernment bodies.

Learning for Creative Futures is a seriesof publications for general, arts practice,and academic readerships, that portrayshow learning environments engagechildren and adolescents in sustainedcreative work and play. Assuming rolesand relationships that bring closeassociation with professionals who workin creative industries, young learnersexperience the vital mix of imagination,long-term planning, knowledgeaccumulation, skill development, andinformed critique. The internationalresearch team of Learning for CreativeFutures includes scholars from thedisciplines of anthropology, education,linguistics, psychology, political science,and sociology. This international enquirynetwork is led by Shirley Brice Heath andShelby Wolf.

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– the opportunity to speak out, listen toand respect others, sharing the knowledge, skills and understandingwe need to live together in harmonywithin the community

– and the chance to look carefully, reflecton what we have learned and see thatthe world is a very special place.

Creative Partnerships Kent is run by asmall, highly experienced team that haslocal, national, and international expertisein facilitating cultural and educationalprogrammes. Team members believe inproviding the highest quality and mostchallenging arts and cultural experiencesfor young people. To this end, they soughtpartnerships with The Sorrell Foundation(and thereby Ben Kelly Associates), RoySmith, Shelby Wolf, and Shirley BriceHeath. The quality of work that has takenplace is the result of an inspired schooland exemplary practitioners who haveseriously undertaken the challenge ofpartnering creatively with teachers,children, parents, and community. These booklets represent sharing of acommon vision that extends from artist toadministrator, teacher to researcher, adult to child. The experiences enjoyedby the children at Hythe are what Creative Partnerships wants for allchildren and believes is the entitlement of every child.

All stories have behind them many otherstories. The tales told in this series are noexception. Behind Visual learning in thecommunity school are the people and thecontexts that give the qualities ofcharacter, time, setting, and energy totheir narratives of creative learning.

Hythe Community School serves theseaside community of Hythe in Kent. The school provides education at theFoundation Stage (Reception Year andnursery children) and Year 1 and Year 2ages 4-7 (following the Key Stage 1curriculum). The school shares its sitewith Hythe Early Years Centre, whichoffers full-day and sessional care tochildren between the ages of 2 and 4 andfollows the Foundation Stage Curriculum.Recognising the worth of each child andteacher, the school seeks to transformeducational standards and raiseachievement, through working with othereducational establishments, parents, andthe local community. Hythe CommunitySchool is a happy, safe and stimulatingenvironment where all members of thecommunity, adults as well as children, arevalued as individuals and encouraged towork together. This community schoolaims to nurture within each person:

– a lifelong love of learning

– the desire to achieve the very best, torise to a challenge and enjoy success

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The research: From the spring of 2003 through the school year 2004, two scholars, Shirley BriceHeath and Shelby Wolf, looked closely at how language, attention, inspiration, and collaboration withinHythe Community School changed through artistic partnership. Their work brought teachers, artists,and students into the research process as questioners, data interpreters, and readers andrespondents assessing the results as set forth in this series of booklets. The research upon whichVisual learning in the community school is based includes transcripts and fieldnotes recorded andanalyzed during the year and reported here through thematic patterns. Academic publications of theLearning for creative futures series will report detailed comparative analyses of language andcognitive development in the context of specific features of creative learning environments.

Shirley Brice Heath, linguistic anthropologist, has studied how different kinds of learning environments support children’s later language development. She takes as her focus within-schoolcreative programmes as well as sustained interactions young people have in their work and play within families, peer relations, and community organisations. She is the author of the classic Ways with words: language, life, and work in communities and classrooms (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1986/1996). Heath has taught at universities throughout the world—most notably StanfordUniversity and Brown University, and currently as Visiting Professor at Kings College, University ofLondon. Of emphasis in her research are the long-term effects of learning in environments heavilydependent on the arts. Within this work, she has given special attention to science and environmentalprojects, and those that encompass social justice concerns. Her resource guide and prize-winningdocumentary ArtShow (2000) feature young leaders in four community arts organisations in the United States. www.shirleybriceheath.com

Shelby Wolf, an award-winning teacher and educational scholar, is a professor at the University ofColorado at Boulder. Her research centres on children’s language and learning through engagementin literature and collaborative as well as creative modes of expression— discussion, writing, the visualarts, and drama. Her most recent book, Interpreting literature with children (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004),portrays her close work with teachers as co-researchers in the study of children’s literary learning. Shehas worked within numerous school-change programmes to validate the perspectives of teachers whoundertake enquiry into how learning works in their classrooms. She is a senior author of HoughtonMifflin English (2004), a textbook series devoted to helping children improve as writers. With ShirleyBrice Heath, she wrote The braid of literature: children’s worlds of reading (Harvard University Press,1992). http://www.Colorado.edu/education/faculty/shelbywolf.

Through their work with Roy Smith, the children come to understand that in art“there’s deliberation, but you’re hoping for accidents”. In Hoping for accidents: media and technique, through working with intention and imagination acrossdifferent media and techniques, young children learn to talk about process, expected and unexpected consequences, and emotional assessments of theircreative work.