Spaces Offering Creative Potential

One of our spaces limitations is the clean walls that cant be damaged.

This limits what you can attach to them and restricts our actions.

However it also means we have to improvise through lighter structures, free-standing ones, create without needing walls. Perform, run etc.

Building a rainforest in a primary school together with teaching assistants there were only a few potential places to attach string across the room using water pipes or use staple gun.

Perhaps all classrooms should be lined with hooks around the walls for such a purpose.

Visiting a secondary School this week the rooms seemed even more restrictive in their potential for change and so restricts explorative, creative activity in changing a space for whatever purpose.

The teaching has reduced potential for departing from the desk and chair scenario plus the constant changing of classes also hampers this.

A field trip / visit is regarded as a significant part of learning in new / different surroundings and yet high schools must predominantly function in very limited ways.

While it seems accepted that people learn in different ways to varying degrees it seems to be ignored that the space itself plays a significant physical and symbolic role in this.

The Empty Room

Liz and I were trying to write.
Frank was off school wanting to play.
Alone Frank built a den using the big cardboard and the pink bed sheet.
Together we built tunnels.
Liz and I wrote a little.
...Thinking about the effect of space. How to explore space through play, how to play by exploring space. Hide and Seek.



Later Frank played alone making a telescope, which he then used to look at the room.
ps. this post would look so much better with the photos big n text above or below but i can't work out how to do it right now. aaaaaagh.

Spiral. Last build of 2011.

This space is great. The privacy and lack of nosy interruption from neighbours means we can enjoy ourselves, make lots of noise and run about.

We dont have to think about the world outside if we dont want to.

We made a spiral hotel and a performing area.

Edie and Martha ran round round round the space.

Its a great size for running.

They played hide and seek with their friend Emma which was ridiculously silly as its 'almost' impossible to find a hiding place.

polly as ever observed from her bean bag.

Today it's 131211

Yesterday it was 13th of the 12th 2011.
Frank wasn't at school so he took all the photographs and did all the making.
Liz and I had a discussion about space.
The Royal Festival Hall.
The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.
Chapel Allerton Arts Festival.
The Whitworth Art Gallery.
Some places to investigate..
Leeds, Bradford, York, Otley, Ilkley, Harrogate, Ripon, Sheffield, Manchester, Huddersfield, Wakefield...

Today it's THE BLACK CAT and THE BIG RAINBOW DEN

The 2 'teams' immediately decided to build dens.
There was a lot of competition over objects, materials and space.
There were more complaints from next door.
The teams were very excited, tired and one was very emotional.
Today it's is going to move now.

Today it's NEXT DOOR TO REAL LIFE

Yesterday was our first in the space.


We immediately built a den. It was minimal and quite sculptural using 3 poles a piece of string and a tarpaulin. It was very exciting building it.



We then celebrated our new space by eating buns inside the den.




Paul arrived he is also going to use the space to draw large scale portraits.

Then another man called Paul walked into the room from the next door accountant’s offices. He was confused as to who we were. We introduced ourselves. He said there were funny noises coming through as the sound travels. I felt quite intimidated by him as he seemed quite tense and cross.
He described it as a ‘squat’ and if we were artists ‘where are your paintings?’ he asked ‘do you have jobs?’

We were all quite upset after he left.


Liz and I discussed the first session in the space which will be for Edie, Martha, Arthur and Frank.

They will have free run of the space and various objects. We will observe them and let them lead us. It will be on Monday.

Palle Nielsen confessed to having 'dictated to kids' in The Model by assuming they would work with the materials in the same way he would have...

Ernest Schachtel in 'On Memory and Childhood Amnesia': 'The adult is usually not capable of experiencing what the child experiences; more often than not he is not even capable of imagining what the child experiences.' he talks about the newness of everything for the child...

Allan Kapprow in The Education of the Un-Artist Part 2 (1972) 'As direct play is denied to adults and gradually discouraged in children, the impulse to play emerges not in true games alone, but in unstated ones of power and deception: people find themselves playing less with each other than on or off each other.'
Also 'in play one is carefree in a game one is anxious about winning'

To allow children to be completely free to play as much as they like.
Creative and imaginative play is an essential part of childhood and development. Spontaneous, natural play should not be undermined or redirected by adults into learning experiences. Play belongs to the child.
Summerhill Policy Statement

Project Space Leeds -den playing, building, drawing, film making, film watching within the exhibition Peering Sideways