CommonGround
2008
Mindful Innovations
The
Sometimes and Always of Play:
Artists as Players in Teaching
and Learning
Richard
Lewis
Founder and Director,
The Touchstone Center
for Children
|
The
importance of keeping alive the sources
of our play as the basis of imaginative
thought and the beginnings of meaningful
learning.
We will
explore the ways we first used our childhood
playing to enter into our own sense of
knowing, and how this experience continues
to be vital to any art making we wish
to share with others. Using examples
of the Touchstone Center's Arts and Education
projects, we will conclude with a hands-on
activity and a discussion and on
why such imaginative playfulness needs
to exist within schools, and within teaching
and learning in particular.
Conference Strand:
Education Reform
Educators:
the
use of play and imaginative
thought within all aspects of learning
and teaching
Artists: the
role of the artist to use and make apparent
the creative and imaginative possibilities
of play
Cultural
Organization Administrators: allowing
the creative energies of play to open
new possibilities
Education
Administrators: the importance
of childhood play within every aspect
of learning and teaching
Community/Parents: the
vital role parents play in letting children
explore the many dimensions of play
and imaginative thought
________________________________________
Richard Lewis has
edited and authored books related
to the imaginative life of childhood,
among them When Thought
is Young, Living By Wonder,
The Bird of Imagining, Each
Sky Has Its Words, and A Tree
Lives.
His most recent book is I
Catch My Moment: Art and Writing by
Children on the Life of Play. Since
its founding in
New York City in 1969, The
Touchstone Center for Children has
worked extensively in creating artist
residencies in public schools that
emphasize our poetic and imaginative
relationship to the natural world.
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