DAY 1
Such a lot of ideas and artefacts generated on the first day in response to Chrissi's invitation and challenge to watch and reflect on the following short clip https://vimeo.com/194276412 Have you experienced something similar? Share your experience and/or re-action to this clip using art - make a collage, produce a drawing, construct an ‘installation’.
Such a lot of ideas and artefacts generated on the first day in response to Chrissi's invitation and challenge to watch and reflect on the following short clip https://vimeo.com/194276412 Have you experienced something similar? Share your experience and/or re-action to this clip using art - make a collage, produce a drawing, construct an ‘installation’.
When I watch a beautifully crafted animation with a story that engages me intellectually and emotionally my first thought is I'd love to be able to make one like this myself. But then I know my own limitations. It's not that I don't think I could make one if I spent a huge amount of time and effort: its more that I don't want to spend the time learning how to do it. In other words I don't care enough about the idea of making such an animation to do it and stop doing all the other things I could be doing in this time.
'Caring about something' seemed to be one of the themes to emerge from the conversations today. It seems to be a prerequisite of creativity and significant achievement. We can only care about so many things at once and the things we care about jostle and compete for the time and spaces we have - so only a few things get the chance to come fruition. I care enough about #creativeHE, exploring creativity and Chrissi to want to use some of my time to contribute and so some of the other things I care about will have to take a back seat for a while.
I tried to connect today's challenge to my current garden project. It's not very exciting and really not very creative but it will bring about change and transform the look of a small part of my garden. We are blessed with a big garden. I care about it a lot and it gives me much joy but at times I am overwhelmed by the scale of what I have to do just to keep up with it and so become paralysed.
A few weeks ago my wife announced she was going to get dig up all the tangled vegetation under our bedroom windows and lay stones. Of course I was goaded into helping and slowly got sucked into the task toiling for a few hours most days, and then starting my own 'transformation' project at the side of the house. Just getting involved, and making a start and then making and seeing progress all contributed to caring about what I was doing and to devoting more time, energy and effort to making it happen. You need to care if you want to sustain something. So caring is an important element of an ecology for achieving something. Without caring the will to pursue a goal of vision will diminish and other things that we care about more will take over.
Through my actions and using the tools and materials I have I am creating a new sense of order in the medium that is my garden. Slowly but surely the after is replacing the before and it's tidier, easier to maintain and when complete it will be more aesthetically pleasing than it was before. In itself, what I am doing its not creative, but all the little bits I do contribute to the whole over time, and the whole is, I think, a creative project to which I contribute.
By a strange coincidence I was listening to 'Womans Hour' on radio 4 this morning while driving and one of the Chelsea Flower Show garden designers (Charlotte Harris) was being interviewed. She talked with great passion about her design (inspired by the Canadian wilderness) but what came across was the care she gave to her creation and her insistence that while perfection was a goal it could never be achieved and the only way you could get anywhere near it was to pay attention to detail. You have to care enough to pay attention to detail. Needless to say she won a gold award.
Back to my real world - here is the bit of detail I did today.
BEFORE AFTER
'Caring about something' seemed to be one of the themes to emerge from the conversations today. It seems to be a prerequisite of creativity and significant achievement. We can only care about so many things at once and the things we care about jostle and compete for the time and spaces we have - so only a few things get the chance to come fruition. I care enough about #creativeHE, exploring creativity and Chrissi to want to use some of my time to contribute and so some of the other things I care about will have to take a back seat for a while.
I tried to connect today's challenge to my current garden project. It's not very exciting and really not very creative but it will bring about change and transform the look of a small part of my garden. We are blessed with a big garden. I care about it a lot and it gives me much joy but at times I am overwhelmed by the scale of what I have to do just to keep up with it and so become paralysed.
A few weeks ago my wife announced she was going to get dig up all the tangled vegetation under our bedroom windows and lay stones. Of course I was goaded into helping and slowly got sucked into the task toiling for a few hours most days, and then starting my own 'transformation' project at the side of the house. Just getting involved, and making a start and then making and seeing progress all contributed to caring about what I was doing and to devoting more time, energy and effort to making it happen. You need to care if you want to sustain something. So caring is an important element of an ecology for achieving something. Without caring the will to pursue a goal of vision will diminish and other things that we care about more will take over.
Through my actions and using the tools and materials I have I am creating a new sense of order in the medium that is my garden. Slowly but surely the after is replacing the before and it's tidier, easier to maintain and when complete it will be more aesthetically pleasing than it was before. In itself, what I am doing its not creative, but all the little bits I do contribute to the whole over time, and the whole is, I think, a creative project to which I contribute.
By a strange coincidence I was listening to 'Womans Hour' on radio 4 this morning while driving and one of the Chelsea Flower Show garden designers (Charlotte Harris) was being interviewed. She talked with great passion about her design (inspired by the Canadian wilderness) but what came across was the care she gave to her creation and her insistence that while perfection was a goal it could never be achieved and the only way you could get anywhere near it was to pay attention to detail. You have to care enough to pay attention to detail. Needless to say she won a gold award.
Back to my real world - here is the bit of detail I did today.
BEFORE AFTER
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I inherited my garden from the two previous owners of my house. The first owner and builder of my house, was a man called Ernest Wright. He created the garden nearly 50 years ago out of farmland and orchard. It's his legacy I am enjoying but struggling to maintain. We often think of creativity as production and we often forget that there may be maintenance to sustain a creation. But he would not have seen or experienced what I see now - only in his imagination could he see and experience what might be. I feel I am the custodian of his creativity a mix of his designs and planting and the natural tendency of nature to do it in its own way. I have learnt to live with this struggle - even allowing the many rabbits that share this space to dig a multitude of holes - what else can I do. From time to time I tweak his canvas. Its an interesting concept of collaborative creativity.. my creative living artefact - my garden, is a never ending work in progress and in time it will pass to someone else who will also have the chance to love, cherish and add to what already exists. So my collage for Day 1 honours Ernest Wright the original designer and architect of this wonderful landscape.
Some teachers have the ability to encourage and enable learners to care deeply about what, how and why they are learning. They can change our whole attitude to learning and cause an epiphany. And like caring for a garden they might only influence us for a short time but the contribution they make can last a lifetime. One teacher certainly had that effect on me.
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