We talk a lot about creating opportunities for learners to use and develop their creativity but what about adults? many of whom are in jobs where there is little opportunity for creative self-expression.

I recently experienced a wonderful example of a way in which many people were able to participate in a process that provided opportunities for creative expression by contributing to the entertainment at a friends 70th birthday party.

It’s an interesting story as it revealed the role of the enabler, R the wife of B whose birthday we were celebrating. It was her idea to create an event which soon became known as ‘BRIFEST’. She organized and resourced the event, found the venue, organized the catering and acted as a facilitator to connect people and encourage collaboration.

My own involvement was through my band. For me it began in October (10 weeks before the event) when I was contacted by R by email. She told me she was planning a surprise birthday party for her husband and she wanted to form it around entertainment provided by friends and family. She knew I was in a band and her husband had seen me several times so my band was on the list of possible contributors to the event along with two other bands and a lot of individuals willing to share their talents.

So, the opportunity was a public event in which people were invited to share their talents, in the spirit that anyone who was willing to contribute was accepted. The gem in all this was the way in which the invitation was made through an email in which individuals were introduced to each other by the party organiser with the expectation that collaborations would form. And form they did - two of the bands including five musicians and a singer into their sets. 

​                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Above - my band with two guest musicians

The line-up included - the amazing ukulele band formed by three people who had never played or practised together or even decided what to play until the evening of the event.There was also the ‘bottle orchestra’ who had only ever played together once, back in 1985! Clearly participants were prepared to take risks in pursuit of making a creative contribution.

​In total, over 20 friends and family members contributed to over four hours of entertainment – music, poetry, story telling, singing and dancing – the list of contributors were captured on the back of a ‘BRIFEST’ T-shirt designed by the organizer.
The whole event brought home to me the value in enabling ordinary people to express themselves creatively through a performing at a public event.

​So what were the steps in liberating the creative potential of participants?
 
It began with a need and desire in the mind of the organizer to create a significant and meaningful event in recognition of this important milestone in the life of her husband. They had a long tradition of surprise birthday parties so the idea of surprise became part of the project and everyone involved was sworn to secrecy.
 
The idea of an evening of entertainment formed over three months before the event and it was shared in an email with the key people who might contribute to check on their interest and availability.
 
Here is the email invitation I received proposing the idea.
I replied   “WOW that sounds really really exciting R..a bit like Jools Holland... you certainly think imaginatively.  I cannot see why my band would not want to be involved. Would we be able to use the equipment in the studios or would we have to bring and set up our own? How long were you imagining we would play for? What are B’s favourite bands/songs? Thanks for the opportunity it sounds like fantastic fun”

Of course my band was interested and I put together a set list that I thought would appeal to B and checked it with R. But I had to go to Australia and other members of the band had commitments and it was early December before we actually got together to begin rehearsing. We had a total of five rehearsals.
​
​In the meantime the organizer’s ideas had developed further and she emailed everyone involved and encouraged collaborations amongst participants. The final sentence in the email was telling. “I look forward to seeing how all you creatives develop this skeleton!” Clearly, she trusted and expected people to be resourceful and inventive to shape the event and its content. Attached to he email was a rough plan for the structure of the evening.

This email acted as a catalyst. There followed a number of emails from participants offering to contribute and through this a number of collaborations emerged. For example, my band invited one participant to play keyboards on a song with us, another to play his 12 string guitar on a song and a female singer to join us on a song (she ended up performing the whole set with us!).

The results were quite magical with everything coming together in both a spontaneous, but well organized way on the evening of the party. A good experience for all and a good example of how everyday creativity can be facilitated through a celebratory event when people are willing to contribute and are enabled to do so. The act of performing in public motivates people to practise as individuals, and to come together to practice. The process encouraged connections to form and new relationships to develop out of which new creations were made. The spirit of the evening was captured in the final song of our set when R & B and their family joined us on stage.

Its World Creativity and Innovation Week and I am participating in another #creativeHE conversation. This one is formed around using and cultivating imagination and its being led by Gillian Judson who leads the ImaginEd network based in Canada. As always these conversations make me think about the topic we are discussing in ways that I have not thought about them before. And stuff emerges, usually in the supplementary questions, that I had not thought about before. For me one of the interesting questions that came in to my mind was, if imagination is primarily concerned with 'mental images'  and these are based on memories of visual perception, how do people who have not been able to see the world  (people who are blind from birth) imagine? This question prompted me to search for answers and so far I have not really discovered an answer that I find satisfactory. But as part of this search I discovered that there is a condition called "aphantasia"where people with sight lose the ability to form images in their mind.

I think the walk provided a natural and relaxing context to have a number of conversations through which we exercised our imaginations and prepared the ground for possible action. In my case the discovery of Habitat Network and making of a simple habitat map using the on-line mapping tool. What comes out of it for my daughter has yet to be seen. If nothing else it will be a memory of a nice walk that we share.

Post script

We had parked the car in a garden centre so we popped in at the end of the walk. I found a wonderful book called Lets Go Outside by Steph Scott and Katie Akers.. it was written for someone like me (grandad with 7 grandchildren) and it was full of imaginative ideas on ‘foraging’ finding and making stuff from the stuff you find outside. I love it. A fantastic example of people sharing their imaginations in a practical and accessible way so that other people can be inspired to use their imaginations.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lets-Go-Outside-Imaginative-Projects/dp/1849942765/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524038965&sr=8-1&keywords=Lets+Go+Outside+by+Steph+Scott+and+Katie+Akers..
​

As a retired academic I don’t have the opportunity for daily interactions with peers so the online #creativeHE conversations are important to me. They enable me to see and listen to the views of other participants and to learn from them. So for the past 3 weeks the academic in me has been brought to life again through participation in the Creativity in the Making conversation.

As a lead facilitator they force and encourage me to do so much more. The first thing they do is force me to make the time to do the job that is required to facilitate the conversation. This requires a certain amount of planning and prioritizing – the opportunity cost of participation.

These conversations force me to think about the topic of conversation more deeply than I have done before and encourage me to see connections and perspectives that I have not seen before. They require me to prepare, as a teacher would, by finding and developing resources to support the conversation. These resources include people as well as artefacts and they make me make connections with people that I did not know before (eg in this recent conversation I interacted with two scholars Tim Ingold and Joy Whitton).

The resources themselves constitute new artefacts in the form of articles, images and video clips. Their making requires me to think and write or do in other ways and develop a certain type of knowing in the process. In an article I have to make explicit what I think which usually involves connecting lots of things other people have thought to create an argument, proposition or, commonly, an interpretation of my own experiences.

The conversation causes me to direct and focus my research into the areas we are exploring in the topic ie the conversation mediates my strategies for inquiry and scholarship. In the process I discover all sorts of things I had not seen before. By participating in the conversation I am exposed to the resources and experiences shared by participants and sometimes these catalyse my own inquiries.

I am also intrigued by what others share. For example, one participant turned my static image into a moving gif image. I asked her how she had achieved this and she gave me the link. I experiments and learnt how to do it so I have now acquired new knowledge and skill which I immediately applied to other projects – like making a movie.

The role of leader also involves synthesising and curating. The Google+ platform is not very good at enabling conversations to be curated but this time I added MAKING & GALLERY to the tags that permitted the conversation and artefacts to be more easily collated. This will be consolidated by the production of an issue of Creative Academic Magazine that collates the posts and permits reflection and analysis and synthesis beyond the conversation ie it turns an event into a process. On this occasion I wanted to use my new found skills in movie making (developed during the #creativeHE conversation) to make a movie. You can see the results in the YouTube clip below. The film is a celebration of this coming together and the creativity of the individuals to make the things they made.

During the conversation Joy Whitton pointed out that one of our motives for creating is to make gifts to enrich the lives and experiences of others and I see this film as a sort of gift from the conversation to the world – our contribution to the annual global Open Education event.
 
Acknowledgements
We don’t have a conversation without people being willing to participate so I would like to thank all those who contributed to the conversation, especially my co-facilitator John Rae.
 
A celebration of the artefacts made during the #creativeHE 'Creativity in the Making' conversation March 6-20 2018 https://plus.google.com/communities/110898703741307769041?
​

I am preparing for the next #creativeHE conversation in early March when I will be working with John Rae to facilitate a two week conversation and inquiry on the theme of Creativity in the Making when we will invite participants to make artefacts in response to any life context or situation,  document and reflect on their making process, and show how creativity featured in it.
Our challenge will be to think of our artefacts less as products of creativity and more as a means for accessing and using creativity. The ‘artistic or aesthetic quality’ of the artefacts we make, will be a secondary consideration and our primary concern will be the process of making and the insights we gain into how our creativity features in the process of making. To provide an illustration I drew on a recent experience I had just one month ago.

 ‘Christmas Painting’

In early December 2017 my wife announced that we were going to club together to buy ourselves a painting for Christmas. My first thought was how difficult it was going to be to find something we will both like. My second thought was, I should stop talking about painting something (which I had been doing for years) and actually do it. Another bit of context was that my interest in painting had been rekindled as a result of watching some YouTube videos of artist David Hockney painting and following this I had tried to make a digital painting on my garden.
 
I went on line and bought a large canvas and stored it in my office as I wanted it to be a surprise. The size of the canvas was determined by an old hot air vent on the wall that we wanted to cover up! But what to paint? I searched for inspiration and remembered a walk we had made in late October when, passing the place where my wife's first husband was buried, we looked back towards the hills behind our house. These hills form a low ridge and there are several chalk quarries in it. I have, through walks with my grandson and a bit of imaginative story telling, renamed this hill, ‘Chalk Mountain’. As we looked across the fields to the hills in the late afternoon autumnal light, we both remarked how stunningly beautiful it was. I took several photographs on my phone. I remembered this moment and phone the photos and decided that this was the scene I wanted to paint it - it inspired me to invest a lot of time, energy, imagination and resources.

​I watched a few video clips on YouTube where artists had painted skies and landscapes with acrylic paints and tried to work out what colours I needed. Then I purchased some brushes and a set of 6 tube of acrylic paint in a box.  With time running out, this was the week before the Christmas week, I started to paint the scene, or rather my version of the scene. In fact, I revisited the spot where I had taken the photos and took some more photos. The field was no longer ploughed but I was looking for different perspectives on the sky and the hills.
 
Each day that week I spent a couple of hours in my office painting and trying not to arouse suspicion. It’s several decades since I painted anything so I kept it simple and experimented a lot. To make my acrylic paint go further I mixed it with white emulsion paint. A lot of the time I was not happy with the results and the more I painted the more I seemed to get away from what I had hoped to achieve - apart from the sky which was the first thing I painted. I was also worried that my wife wouldn’t like it. But gradually, the composition, colours and effects I wanted, or at least that I could live with, began to emerge and I began to feel a bit happier with the result.
 
Eventually, on Christmas Eve I plucked up courage to show my wife. She had no idea I was doing it and I was relieved and pleasantly surprised that she didn't tell me to start again. She made a few suggestions, including repainting the foreground and suggested the colour that she thought might work better. I wasn't happy either with the foreground so I readily agreed and sure enough it looked better when it was repainted. I think she was pleased that she had influenced the picture and that evening we hung it on the wall in the lounge.
 
Hanging it on the wall became a form of public exhibition and a talking point over Christmas when family and visitors were able to comment on it. Because the scene was familiar everyone was able create their own interpretations and meanings. Everyone was surprised and generally complementary and this made me feel good about it. In this way it was accepted and assimilated into our life and our home.

Making my artefact
 
I made a map of the most important events in my project (Figure1). The artefact I made grew out of my relationship with my wife and our interaction with the landscape we live in and to some extent things that had happened in the past. The view of the hills held multiple meanings for me and my wife and these meanings became incorporated, quite naturally into the painting and into the motivations that led to the painting. I did not need to imagine a scene I had seen and experienced this scene and I could see the landscape I wanted to paint any time by taking a 15min walk.

​The painting is a novel (for me) relational and meaningful product grown in the particular circumstances of my life. For example, my wife’s insistence that we needed some artwork for the wall and the connection of this to Christmas, were particular contextual circumstances that acted as a catalyst for action. Perhaps also my desire to avoid ending up with a painting I didn’t like was also a factor.

Another recent circumstance was the fact that I had, through my involvement in the early December #creativeHE discussion on creativity in practice, rekindled my interest in painting.
 
I had watched a number of videos showing artist David Hockney at work which I’d found quite inspiring, and I’d had a go at creating a digital painting of my garden. All these things connected to create the reasons and affordance (opportunity for action) for me to try to paint a picture to fulfil the need I now had.
 
The form of the artefact itself was influenced by such things as the size of the vent on the wall, my wife’s desires for certain colours (autumnal browns rather than spring of summer greens that I would have preferred), and my need to find a subject that meant something not just to me, but to the whole family, as it was going to become a prominent feature of our home. All these things became connected in my project.
 
Once I had found my subject I felt motivated to have a go at painting it. I painted the sky and liked it and this encouraged me to go further. But I didn’t like the results of painting the hills and had several goes at it, even changing the shape of the hills and quarries several times. This was my first attempt to pain in many years and I had to do a lot of experimentation mixing colours and using different brushes to get the effects I wanted. It was very much trial and error, or on the job learning, rather than applying techniques that had already been mastered.
 
Painting the picture was more than an act of self-expression as my wife had to like it as well. If there hadn’t been the Christmas deadline I probably would have carried on tinkering with it for a while. When my wife did finally see it, her positive reaction gave me confidence to see it through (a negative reaction would have caused me to lose heart). I was able to use her suggestion for repainting the foreground and I think that helped her have some ownership for it.
 
How did my creativity feature in making this artefact?  - my theories of creativity
 
I don’t think any individual part of my making process was creative: in fact putting paint on the canvas felt very uncreative. Through this reflective process I have come to see my creativity as the way I connected everything so that eventually something whole and quite different to anything I had produced before was brought into existence. I found David Gauntlet’s ideas on making particularly useful. At the start of his book ‘Making is Connecting’ he offers three propositions:
 
Making is connecting because you have to connect things together (materials, ideas, or both) to make something new; Making is connecting because acts of creativity usually involve, at some point, a social dimension and connect us with other people; And making is connecting because through making things and sharing them in the world, we increase our engagement and connection with our social and physical environments. Of course, there will be objections and exceptions to each of these, which we may consider along the way. But that’s my basic set of propositions.’ (Gauntlet 2011:2)
 
I can see from the map of my process that all three of these propositions are valid. I connected ideas, emotions, experiences and materials in particular ways and in a particular time frame to produce something new and tangible. I connected to people, in particular my wife, who had shared the same experience of the autumn walk that became the inspiration for my painting and also, inadvertently, became the catalyst for my process of connecting. And through the process of making I engaged more deeply with my physical and social environment and the feelings that my interactions created.
 
Of course, you can’t connect things without perception and imagination (ability to connect things mentally) since seeing that something has the possibility for connection in the first place whether in advance or as the situation presents itself, are important part of this process of making.  And, we do not connect random things, there is a process going on all the time where we select and choose things to connect that fit our purpose and our mental models of what we are trying to do. In this way our process of connecting draws together, combines and integrates things that are meaningful in the context of our making. And this process of connecting does not end when we have finished our painting. When we spend time thinking about what we have done by reflecting in a fairly systematic way, our clever mind can see and find even more connections in the process as it tries to make more sense and meaning of the whole perhaps by creating a story. And as I write this now I can see that this story becomes an extension of the making is connecting process.
 
Of course we can also use technology to assist our imagination. For example, while I was painting I periodically looked at the photograph on my phone to remind myself of the scene and at the same time tap into some nice feelings that helped to motivate me. I was using the technology to connect me back to the moments that triggered my imagination for the project.
 
But I also had the scene in my mind and I was drawing on the mental image I had which was different to the photo. This imagined image was continuously refined as the colours and shapes went onto the canvas as I used what limited skills I had to try to create a picture that I (and I hoped my wife and family) would be happy with. The final painting was a synthesis of my efforts and perhaps creativity lies in this synthesis of all the efforts.
 
Making is connecting is a theory of creativity in so far as it explains how and why something is brought into existence. But I would like to emphasis the idea that connecting is an ecological process in which the process of connecting is fundamentally a relational and interactional process of re-making meaning and making new meaning.
 
My process of ‘making’ was indeed about connecting things but it was also ecological in the sense that in order to connect these things in ways that mattered to me I ‘made’ an ecology that connected many things in ways that were meaningful.  So what did my ecology connect?

It involved my purpose, my desire to create this picture in my circumstances and the time frame I had set myself. It involved me physically, cognitively and emotionally, in relationships and interactions with my wife. It involved me interacting with, sensing and experiencing my physical environment - my home and the landscape in which I live, and the virtual environment (accessing videos that inspired me and showed me some techniques) and music I listened to while painting. I connected the resources I needed to like canvas and paints and specialized tools like paint brushes. To make my picture I connected the mental images and emotions to the physical act of painting: I interacted with the paints and canvas to respond to the imagined scenes in my mind. What emerged was not necessarily what I imagined, it was a trial and error process and I stuck with the colours and shapes I liked and repainted what I didn’t like. The very act of painting was creating something that I gave meaning to – what was left meant something to me. I energized myself by playing loud music (often Max Richter’s Three Worlds) as I painted and I know some of this music created certain feelings or moods so that was another connection in the process. And one more way I connected things was to connect to my own past life – for example to my experiences of painting in my youth and a few occasions in adult life.

It seems to me that the process of making of this artefact emerged through the circumstances of my life in the manner envisaged by Carl Rogers (1961) – the creative process is, ‘the emergence in action of a novel relational product growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, or circumstances of their life’. In view of my experience I can personalise and tweak this definition – my creative process involved ‘the emergence, through a process of connecting particular things that mattered to me, of a novel relational product growing out of my uniqueness as an individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, and circumstances of my life’. The map of my making process shows this in action.
 
The poet and author William Plomer once said, “It is the function of creative people to perceive relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expressions that seem utterly different, and to be able to Connect the seemingly Unconnected".” But we are all creative people and my story illustrates that when we create we connect, and the things we connect are not really unconnected because they are connected by our very existence in the world we inhabit and interact with. Connections are recognized and forged when we pursue a purpose like the desire to make something or make something happen and we develop (make) an ecology to enable us to achieve this goal.
  
References
Jackson, N.J. (2016) Exploring Learning Ecologies Lulu
Gauntlet, D. (2011) Making is Connecting, The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011, 232 pages
Rogers, C.R., (1960) On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin

I had come to Swaraj to see how they approached project-based learning. As a self-directed learner, just like the khoji’s, I decided to undertake my own mini project. I was inspired by the landscape I could see from my window (right). One of the groups was involved in a listening project and I was intrigued by the idea oflistening as a form of engaging with the environment. So I decided to wander in the landscape and listen to the sounds in it.
 
I took a 3 hour walk along the road I could see from my window. I walked at a slow pace so I could take in the landscape and listen to the sounds. Periodically I stopped walking and sat on a rock, closed my eyes and just listened and felt the atmosphere. I used an audio recorder to capture some of the sounds I heard. As I wandered I realised that the soundscape was as much a part of the landscape as the rocks and trees. The sounds were the manifestations of animals that were living in the landscape – insects, birds, bullocks, goats, people.  It brought back memories of the time I had spent in Saudi Arabia as a geologist when I was often alone in a landscape not dissimilar to the one I was now in. Indeed, part of my experience on that walk was to interpret the rocks in the landscape as well as the way the people were using the landscape. A landscape means so much more when we can comprehend what we are seeing. The people I met were friendly given the oddness of a pale skinned foreigner walking in their landscape: it was as if it happened every day. This simple experience gave me a lot of pleasure and I decided to do the same when I got home in my own landscape. When I got back home I mixed the sound and the photos I had taken to produce a simple movie that conveys something of my experience.
 
My ecology for learning.
 
This was me interacting with my physical environment and learning from my interactions. I had a need and desire (will/motivation) to create a simple learning project to provide khoji’s with an illustration of how the concept of a learning ecology can be applied to real world learning situations. My context, embedded in the Swaraj educational process, my research into the Swaraj project-based learning process, and my longer term research into learning ecologies, (note I am a context) all provided me with purpose and fuelled my motivation.
 
I was attracted to the scene I could see from my bedroom window. It reminded me of similar landscapes I had worked in as a geologist in western Saudi Arabia which has similar climate and topography. My past experiences were influencing my thinking in the present.
 
To fulfil the project brief – interacting with the outer world and forming new perspectives as a result of my interactions. I imagined a journey through the landscape paying particular attention to three things – the geology (the rocks and structures that shaped the landscape), the way people had shaped and inhabited the landscape and the sounds in the landscape (the soundscape).

​My journey in the landscape unfolded over 3 hours. I then spent another 2 hours later in the day writing these notes and another hour in the early hours of the following day as fresh ideas came to me as I lay in bed. I then spent another 2 hours doing an evening walk and I will spend another 3 or 4 hours in the future producing a simple movie blending the sights and sounds I had witnesses to accompany these notes. [Nb the absence of connectivity hindered my ability to produce the movie I wanted to make as I write these notes].

My landscape was on my doorstep so it was easy to access. The affordances for learning where in the landscape and the process I created to experience, document and reflect on what I had experienced. The resources were all around me – the physical landscape, the rocks and the living things in it, I used a number of tools and technologies - my notebook to record thoughts and feelings, my camera to record what I saw and my audio recorder to record the sounds I was hearing. I will eventually use my imovie software to mix the sound and visuals together. I also needed water to sustain me – the landscape reminded me that without water I would not flourish. The output from this exercise will be a new resource – my notes and the accompanying movie I will make available so that others can use.
 
My ecology embraced the wonderful physical spaces of the landscape and the intellectual and psychological spaces I created to experience being in the landscape and to pursue my inquiry. As I journeyed I formed a relationship with the landscape and the sounds in it – walking along the road, climbing the hills and sitting or standing quietly. I met some people and said hello (namestai), people reacted in a friendly and respectful way. I even asked through signs if I could take their photos and several people gave me permission, but some did not.
 
I made good use of my camera and recorder and their use was never far from my mind. Should I record what I am seeing or hearing? In my mind I was also relating to the idea of learning ecologies especially as I write these notes.
 
My process began with my walk and the pauses I made along the way to sit quietly and think about what was happening. It was peppered with photographic and audio recording and occasional note taking. After my walk I reflected on my experience, and I’m doing this again as I write up my notes. Reflection is also likely to happen when I talk about my experience and when I create my movie.

What did I learn about myself in the outer world through this interaction?
 
My journey of learning did not happen in a simple linear way. I have indicated that it has occurred in several episodes within the landscape, while writing, while in bed and in future when I make my movie. Through my writing and movie making I try to bring my learning into a coherent whole and present it in a way that makes sense to me and hopefully to others.
 
The story of the landscape
 
Drawing on knowledge I developed many years ago as a geologist – I can see that the landscape is formed from metamorphic rocks, softer greenish phyllites and harder white or buff coloured siliceous rocks. There are also abundant lenses and veins of quartz. From the intercalated nature of the rocks I am assuming that they were originally laid down as a sequence of muds and fine sands in an ancient sea before being compressed and folded – the rocks are steeply dipping to the north. The rocks have been eroded by water into a series of hills and valleys - dry water courses can be seen in the bottom of valleys that are presumably full during the monsoon season. One of the watercourses has been dammed – over 10m high and a small lake has been formed containing water all year round. Water is a very precious resource here.
 
Human impact on the landscape
 
People have shaped this landscape they have dammed the river, built a metalled road, dug ditches, built dry stone walls to retain soil and in the valleys create temporary ponds so the water can sink into the ground. Where there is enough soil they have cultivated the land. They build their houses and walls from the flat stones beneath their feet and there are several quarries.
 
In one idyllic spot where the road crossed a small valley I found a well in the valley floor, perhaps 10m deep showing me that there was groundwater at this depth. It had a pump that fed a trough for the cows. It also fed numerous pipes for irrigation and domestic purposes. A number of crops were being grown in this valley.  The thought occurred to me that the agricultural practice developed at Swaraj called ‘gangamandal’ could be shared with the farmers in this valley.

Impact on me
 
The #walkingcurriculum (Gillian Judson) gets learners out of the classroom to experience the world. My walk taught me the power of a walk, punctuated by pauses, to experience, sense and make sense of the unfamiliar world on my doorstep. They changed my perception of me interacting with my environment, which was the purpose of the brief that khoji’s had been given. By taking time to experience and record some of my sensory experiences, I was able to create a deeper perspective on this particular experience of the world.
 
Firstly, I felt present in the landscape and when I sat, looked and listened, I felt part of the landscape. I also realised I was also part of the soundscape. As I walked on the dusty road my feet crunched the stones, my bag made a noise as it rubbed against my side and when I climbed a hill by breathing became louder and I heard stones roll away as I dislodged them with my feet. These noises interfered with what I could hear forcing me to stop frequently so I could hear the sounds that nature was making.
 
Secondly, I recognised my walk provided me with a rich sensual experience. I was conscious of my senses feeding in information from the environment through seeing, hearing, feeling eg the sunshine and wind on my skin and the stones crunching under my feet, smelling (eg walking past the carcass of a dead cow or a pile of dung) and tasting as I drank my water sparingly or licked the salty sweat off the top of my lip. All my senses were engaged – that is the power of a walk in which we pay attention to what our senses are telling us.
 
Thirdly, I felt joy. I enjoyed the physical effort of the walk and climbing hills and the way the road led me over hills to new vistas and experiences. I saw things I hadn’t seen before, like two eagles swooping over my head. I enjoyed the positive reactions of people as I said hello, and the laughing girls carrying wood who posed for me to take a photo. Because of these responses I felt that I was being accepted into the owners of this landscape, if only for a few moments.
 
Because of the context and the time and opportunity Swaraj has given me, I felt I had been able to taken my senses for a walk and pay attention to things they were telling me in a way that I do not normally do. In this respect it was an extra-ordinary experience. I enjoy walking at home but I thought I would try this approach of taking a camera and recorder and spending time thinking about what I was experiencing as I wandered. The experience gave me an insight into how I might facilitate an experiential workshop using these ideas.

​Swaraj University is located in the hills 12km south of Udaipur.  My journey along narrow twisting roads through sparsely vegetated hillsides helped prepare me for the rural setting of the campus at Topovan Ashram. A rusty gate with a welcome home sign signalled I had reached my goal and I was met by a small group khoji’s (student learners) and Rahul Hasijah (right) who was the chief facilitator and my host.
 
The idea of university conjures images of a large campus for thousands of students and academics providing higher education that is recognised through degrees. But Swaraj is not like this: it's more like a commune in the sense of a small closely knit community of people who share common beliefs about education and practices in learning. The idea of a learning ecosystem seems more relevant and useful to me (discussed in another post).
​ 
The hills surrounding Swaraj are quite barren perhaps 70% is rocky outcrop with little soil: it felt very much like the terrain I had worked in as a geologist in Saudi Arabia. It’s not easy to sustain life in this inhospitable environment but somehow the local people with their herds of goats and small areas of cultivation, managed to. Looking back from the hills the campus looks like an oasis thanks to Mr Mitra (a former Dean of Education at an Agricultural College) who came to live here 28 years ago cultivated and irrigated the land growing vegetables, bananas, dates and papaya and more.

A project-based approach to developing self-directed learners 
 
My own project, the reason I had come, was to learn about the context and how Swaraj encouraged learners to develop themselves as autonomous self-directing learners. My particular interest was how the pedagogical practices being used enabled khoji's to create their own ecologies for learning and achieving.  Obviously I was limited to the observations I could make during the week I had chosen for my visit. During this time 7 khoji’s in the first year of the programme were part way through their second 6 week Khoji - meet. The activity they were undertaking was a self-managed project whose purpose was to interact in some way with the world outside the campus and develop a (new) perspective for themselves of the world they were interacting with. They had to decide on the output from the process and present their interaction to peers. I was not able to see these projects from start to completion but I saw enough to appreciate the learning through doing process.
 
Khojis and facilitators had organised themselves into five project groups.

​Gp1: One khoji had chosen to try to interact with people who lived in the hills behind the campus. She was being helped by an experienced facilitator and together they were trying to gain a better understanding of how the people who inhabited the inhospitable landscape managed to survive asking questions like, What does everyday living look like through their eyes? How do they sustain themselves and their families? The student and facilitator had encountered people in the fields and on the roads and had entered into conversations but it had become increasingly difficult to engage people who were suspicious of anyone they didn’t know. She and the facilitator were documenting their experience in notes and photographs. The outcomes from this project to understand people and how they lived in the landscape were to be shared with the group and preserved for future generations of khoji’s in a photographic documentary.

​Gp3: Another khoji was undertaking a project on listening. She had decided to engage shopkeepers as her subject and she wanted to engage them in conversations about their anxieties and fears. She had prepared herself using role play. The facilitator was engaged in his own project, he was going to stand around with a placard inviting people to talk to him about anything they wanted to talk about. Both people were interested in how they coped with their own fears of interacting with people they did not know in these highly personal ways.

​I spent an afternoon with this group and witnessed one of the khoji's facilitating a 1 hour session using play with a group of around 26 children from about 3 to 12, boys and girls. His facilitation was masterful and the kids responded with enthusiasm and joy to his games. The other khoji tried to work out how she would engage the kids on her next visit. She found out they liked painting and was considering a session where she used painting as a medium to engage them to explore the idea of community.

Ecological perspectives on this way of learning
 
The reason for my visit was to try to understand how Swaraj facilitated the development of autonomous, self-directing learners in the context of their mission to develop social entrepreneurs. Clearly, I was only able to see a snapshot of a substantial programme and the fact I had picked the week of my visit meant I could only observe what was happening in that week. However, my working hypothesis is that the best way to develop learners as consciously competent creators of their own ecologies for learning and achieving is primarily through projects that they conceive, design and implement themselves. Fortunately, the type of learning processes I was able to witness was the type of process I was hoping to see.
 
From my field observations I was able to see that a simple brief – interact with the world outside the compound and pay attention to what you are learning through the experience, provided the catalyst for imagining, self-organising, discussion and decision making, planning and preparation and then execution of a strategy in cultural/social situations that were unfamiliar, uncertain and unpredictable. Some of the contexts being worked in were quite challenging and required a degree of courage. Perhaps also there was a level of naivety in expectations of what could be achieved, but perhaps this was also necessary as it provided a good basis for learning from the experience. The involvement of experienced facilitators or former khojis with particular knowledge and skills was instrumental in enabling khoji’s to make progress. In the short time I was there, projects were executed to varying degrees of success and some had yet to be fully implemented. Within the process facilitators encouraged participants to understand themselves and be aware of what was happening ie they were instrumental in developing conscious competence.

From khoji’s descriptions of what they had been doing I knew I could relate their thinking, doings, relationships and interactions to my framework for learning ecologies but I wanted to encourage khoji’s to recognise that learning and practice were intimately bound up in an ecology that they created/co-created.

Philosophical underpinnings of the learning ecosystem

Learning ecosystems do not just inhabit a physical space or environment - they also inhabit an intellectual or philosophical space.

Swaraj has none of the features we typically associate with a university. It lacks the monolithic bureaucracy, centralized admin systems, hierarchical management, disciplinary academic structures, research, IT and other resource infrastructures. Nor does it have the QA systems and regulatory procedures. But it is an organization that is committed to helping people to learn and develop themselves. Instead it has belief and value systems and culture and educational practices that are based on a philosophy of self-governance – Swaraj. Its scale is that of a family with a culture of shared beliefs rather than a diverse complex society with competing goals, which is a university. As a family everyone knows and cares for each other. In my view Swaraj is best appreciated as a learning ecosystem devoted to promoting and supporting particular forms of self-regulated learning.

In a conversation I recorded, Rahul identified what he considered to be the key features of the community’s ecology for learning as:

• The focus on head, heart and hands. We help learners appreciate that learning through doing and experiencing what they do involves the practical, the cognitive and the emotional dimensions its not just an intellectual process.
• Learning is not just a personal matter it’s a collective matter – your decisions and acts impact on others. As they interact with the world, their families, working in communities they become more aware of their connection to a bigger self. There is a lot of peer to peer learning. We expect khojis to motivate and help each other.
• We emphasise the idea of living a healthy life with a concern for our environment and how it can be sustained. Over time khojis begin to question the value of money and what constitutes a resource. Connected to this we promote the idea of a gift ecology viewing learning as a gift and by helping others to learn and live we are giving the person a gift. Our concept for mentors is part of our gift culture. They don’t get paid - they give their time, knowledge and skills  to help others learn.
• Our concept of teaching is that of facilitation in which facilitators are as much a part of the collective or social learning process ie working alongside khojis on their own learning projects, as they are helping khojis to learn and develop. The role of facilitation is not about holding the hands of khojis but of supporting and challenging when it is necessary.

The purpose of learning is freedom and freedom is another word for self-reliance. Self-reliance means freedom from dependence on others, or any external support. 

Self-sufficiency, then has three meanings. The first is that one should not depend on others for one’s daily bread. The second is that one should have developed the power to acquire knowledge for oneself. The third is that a man should be able to rule himself, to control his senses and his thoughts. p31
 
In line with these ways of thinking Vinobe identifies a number of features of Nai Talim (‘new education’) 
 
1 Teachers and students must regard themselves as fellow workers. ‘The major need is for the teacher and student to become work partners and this ca happen only when the distinction between the teacher and ‘teaching’ and the student and ‘learning’ can be overcome’ p62
2 Knowledge and work are both forms of the same thing and it is impossible to distinguish between a knowledge process and a work process. p62
3 NT does not discipline students it gives them complete freedom p63
4 NT is a philosophy of living its an attitude to life that we have to bring to all our work p69
5 Everyone ought to do manual labour for his food p73

All these ideas can be seen in the Swaraj learning ecosystem.

Are these educational ideas and practices relevant to UK higher education? I would say, with the exception of the 5th idea, they are. The core idea of a project-based, peer with peer collaborative learning underpinned by teacher and mentor facilitators is highly relevant to the enterprise of enabling learners to prepare themselves for a complex world. 

I arrived in Upaidur in the early hours and it was still dark. My first impression in the dark and half-light as I drove from the airport in a considerately driven taxi, was that it felt like parts of Saudi Arabia. The style of buildings some of them quite make-shift and looking derelict, and the lots of rebuilding, and the roads and how they were being used, the hills, the industry.

I am staying at the Jagat Niwas Palace hotel on the edge of Lake Picholla, without doubt it is the most beautiful part of Udaipur. But I was so tiered after 22 hours without sleep, that after I checked in I slept for nearly 5 hours. I woke to a warm, sunny early afternoon and venturing outside my room, which opens onto a terrace, I was able to appreciate the beautiful surroundings I am in. My hotel, was originally a mansion built in the early 1600’s and its a wonderfully proportioned building formed around an open courtyard on 4 levels including a roof terrace. All the rooms open onto the courtyard and terraces and dotted around the walls are cosy nooks where you can sit and drink tea. The palace overlooks Lake Picholla around which are many other palaces, parks, hotels and other buildings. Across the lake in the distance are the hills of Rajasthan beyond which the country becomes arid and desert like. Udaipur is the historic capital of the kingdom of Mewar in the former Rajputana Agency. It was founded in 1553 by Maharana Udai Singh of the Sisodia clan of Rajput and remained as the capital city till 1818 when it became a British princely state. The city is a chaotic maze of little twisting streets full of tut-tuts, motorbikes and cars jostling with pedestrians and freely wandering cows. Down by the water’s edge people wash themselves or their clothes. This is India as I imagined it with the ancient and modern co-existing side by side. I know I’m in a place with a long history and rich cultural past and a busy present.  It was frustrating not to have a guide to interpret what I was seeing: on a boat trip round the lake I could see that there were many buildings of significance but I don’t know what they were. Fortunately, I was able to use google maps to at least identify the points if interest I was looking at.  As I wandered the streets I found the people to be friendly and as a foreign visitor I felt safe and welcome and I was treated with respect whenever I had a conversation. This was my introduction to the context in which my fieldwork is located.

​On my second day as a visitor to Udaipur I’d planned to visit a number of places of interest and my first on my list was Jagdish Hindu temple built over 400 years ago. I had not seen such a structure and detailed carvings before – what craftsmanship. As I entered the temple I was greeted by someone who very soon became my self-appointed guide. But I was soon grateful as he explained the history and meaning of what I was experiencing. He told me he was an artist- rather he led a group of artists: and his house next to the temple. Towards the end of the guided tour he led me down a passage into a room containing many miniature paintings of traditional scenes. It was immediately apparent that this was a sales pitch. I liked the artwork but I had no intention to buy at the seriously inflated prices – several hundred pounds for one featuring a court scene that I liked. I had seen similar paintings or prints in shops for a fraction of the price. I listened respectfully but after about 20mins I had to break off what had been an amicable conversation.  On reflection I can see that my self-appointed guide had worked hard to develop a personal relationship in the hope that I would trust him or perhaps feel obliged to purchase his artwork. 
 

I found this experience interesting in the light of the book I had just finished reading –‘Start Something that Matters’ by Blake Mycoskie founder of TOMS – ‘Tomorrow’s Shoes’.  Blake had been inspired, during a visit to Argentina, to create a business with a social heart through two different experiences. The first involved buying and wearing the traditional shoes called the ‘alpargata’ – his first idea was that the show might have market potential in the USA. The second experience was witnessing first hand children walking the streets with no shoes. He connected his business idea with the idea that at the core of his business model he would place the idea of gifting. For every pair of shoes that were sold his business would donate a pair of shoes to a child without shoes. The idea of ‘1 for 1’ was born as a way a business could make a positive and direct impact on the world.
 
I bought this book at the airport and thought it would be a good idea to read it as part of my prep for my visit to Swaraj. I love the core idea in the book that the world would be a better place if business that sought to make a profit, ‘give’ as well as ‘take’ from the world. I thought about my own small enterprises and viewed them from the gifting perspective. They are underpinned by the idea that we,  (me and the volunteers I work with) are working on behalf of educators all over the world and the fruits of our research (our writings / magazines) are gifted to the community of interest we support through Creative Commons licences.  The 1for1 model doesn’t work for us because we don’t actually sell anything, we give our own time to develop the perspectives that we then share freely. Blake’s story challenges me to ask, ‘is that enough?’. Can we go further to provide gifts for people who have far fewer educational opportunities than I have had. Perhaps my visit to Swaraj will help me explore this question.

I love doing fieldwork – discovering for myself the detail, beauty and complexity of natural phenomenon. It’s this combination that attracted me to geology. Field work in education

​. I’m writing this post sitting in Mumbai airport at 3am, my first foot in India, so to speak, and the start of a new ed(ucational)venture.
 
The story of how I came to be here began six months ago, while undertaking research for the creative pedagogies for creative learning ecologies project I came across a TEDx talk by Rahul Hasijah. He talked about the education provided by Swaraj University near Udaipur in Rajastahn province of NW India to develop learners as social entrepreneurs. Like many TED speakers his talk was quite inspiring and I searched for more information. I found the university website and an article he had written and emailed him to see if we could republish it in Creative Academic magazine. He readily agreed and in my capacity as editor I helped him develop the piece. Through our conversation I formed a plan to visit the university and Rahul was very encouraging.
 
Journeying – field trips are all about participating in a journey that involves mentally and physically getting ready and the participating in a journey that takes us from what is known into the unknown. Of course life itself is a never ending journey and where we go is as much about our orientation to exploration as it is to our circumstances.  

Six months after discovering Swaraj University here I am on my way to Udaipur feeling excited, expectant and a little apprehensive as well as feeling a bit odd after travelling for 13 hours with another 6 ahead of me before I reach my hotel in Udaipur.
 
Travelling puts you into a liminal state – betwixt and between, moving from one place to another from what is familiar everyday to what, in this case is completely unfamiliar.  I remember from my days as a geologist that sometimes fieldwork involves a continuous process of travelling. Making a new path in order to discover new things. Here I am journeying towards a specific place inhabited by particular people who do particular things for particular purposes. My fieldwork involves journeying into their lives for a short while to try to connect their lives to my own.
 
I have done some preparation and I think I know what sort of things I want to learn, but of course what emerges may be totally different. I want to understand how this form of entrepreneurial education has come about – it is itself the product of entrepreneurs seeing and acting on opportunity driven by strong personal beliefs, and what it is about the context that enables it to flourish. I want to know why the teachers – facilitators and mentors have got involved in this novel educational project. I want to appreciate how learners experience these forms of education, why they have chosen to participate in it and how they fell they are being changed by the experience. I want to see what I can learn from this approach to education that I can incorporate into my own practice, and my hope is that I can form new relationships from which new, as yet unimagined, possibilities can grow.
 
I have lots of questions but sometimes you just have to experience something in order to know what questions to ask and this is why I have come here in order to experience the context in order to understand the questions I need to ask – and that is at the heart of the idea of fieldwork – to experience and better understand the context.

Higher education students are continually told that employers value creativity yet higher education seems to do little to encourage them to use their creativity. Furthermore, within our culture we are reluctant to talk about our own creativity. This is partly because it is considered inappropriate to publicly broadcast our own achievements and practices, and partly because we don't have the words to describe it in a meaningful way. Which is why people like Steve Jobs have helped by explaining creativity in simple down to earth language. "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."  

If we want a more creative world there is a job to be done in encouraging people to share their own stories about being creative and what creativity means to them in their own everyday practices and circumstances.  All too often in education we talk about creativity in a way that is not contextualized or situated in time, or a place, a circumstance, a culture, a problem or an opportunity that someone – a particular person, cares enough about to want to put effort and imagination into doing something that brings something into existence. But for creativity to have value beyond an individual: it must be relevant to others and a particular context or purpose.

​Drawing on Carl Rogers’ ecological concept of creativity namely, ‘the emergence in action of a novel relational product growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, or circumstances of their life(1), we might visualize how creativity emerges from the ecologies of practice people create in environments that are not structured specifically for learning – like work (2,3).
 
By ‘practice’ we mean ‘action rather than thought or ideas’(4), ‘the application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it for example, the practice of teaching’(5). By ecology of practice, we mean the set of relationships and interactions a person creates in their environment and all the people, material and virtual things in their environment, in order to achieve a goal or fulfil a purpose (summarized in Figure 1). Through these personal stories we want to explore how creativity featured, or might feature, in a particular ecology of practice.

Figure 1 Learning ecology framework we are developing and evaluating
​
​To practice as a teacher, or perform any other complex role, involves a commitment to developing the skills, behaviours and ways of thinking that are necessary to fulfil the role in an effective, professional and creative manner. It is necessary to practice these ways of being ‘to perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to acquire, improve or maintain proficiency in it.’(5) Another aspect of our project is to explore how practitioners develop themselves through practical experience, education and training to be able to practice in effective and creative ways. In this way we might connect the practices of teachers in higher education to the practices of practitioners in the world beyond formal education.

OPEN INVITATION
 
We want to encourage people to share their stories about how they use their creativity in their own work-related practice, or any other contexts where they regularly engage in practice eg pursuing a hobby or interest. Contributions will be shared through Creative Academic Magazine (CAM9) which will be published 4 times while the project runs between December 2017- December 2018
 
To join this open collaborative project please visit
http://www.creativeacademic.uk/creativity-in-practice.html
 
Sources
1  Rogers, C.R., (1960) On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 
2 Jackson N J (2016) Exploring Learning Ecologies Chalk Mountain / Lulu
3 Jackson, N. J. and Willis, J. (eds) Exploring Creative Ecologies Creative Academic Magazine Issue #5 September 2016 Available at http://www.creativeacademic.uk/magazine.html
4 Cambridge Dictionary available at https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/practice
5 Oxford Dictionary available at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/practise

 I'm back in Australia to visit my mum. She lives in a lovely place on the southern New South Wales coast.  My parents have lived here for over 30 years and I have visited many times. It's the only reason I come here and it has in recent years become an annual pilgrimage (see previous October/November blogs). I know that when she is no longer here I am unlikely to come again and every time I leave I think I might never come back again.

For the past two months we have been working on the 19th issue of Lifewde Magazine in which we explore the idea of mental time travel - connecting to our memories of the past.  By coincidence I find myself writing a short article for the magazine and the fact I am here stimulates a particular stream of thoughts. 

The enormous influence of our past

We are who we are because of our past and our present is influenced by all the things we have learnt and experienced and draw from in our present.  Our experiences and associated memories are distributed across all the different parts of our lives – the lifewide dimension, and they accumulate throughout our life – the lifelong dimension. And assuming that our memory is not impaired, we can access our past anytime and anywhere. Our ability to connect to our past and the events and people in it, is one of the things that makes us human and the particular events and people we connect to in the different parts of our lives is what makes us the particular person we are.
 
What triggers a memory?

Memories can enter our consciousness in a spontaneous way but they are often triggered or stimulated by another thought. A conversation with friend might touch on something that we can relate to and lead us to share a memory of our own experience, or we might be out walking or jogging, or driving a car and our stream of thoughts might alight on a particular memory. A piece of music might remind us of something, or an item of clothing, a child’s toy or a photograph. Particular physical spaces can also stimulate memories particularly when we enter the same environment where an experience we had formed a memory.
 It’s easy to appreciate the significance of this as I sit writing this short article on my mother’s veranda in Australia. The fact I am here reflects the fact that over 40 years ago my parents and siblings migrated to Australia and my life took a very differed direction to theirs. But I have visited them many times since then. The few weeks I spend here on the south coast of New South Wales is like a retreat and I find it an easy place to think about my past: particularly past events that happened in this space. For example, I have very vivid memories of sitting on the prickly couch grass with my wife in 1993. The adjacent photo shows the exact spot where this memory was formed. I remember we kept shifting our position to catch the late afternoon winter sun and avoid the shadows creeping towards us. I don’t remember what we talked about, probably it was about our holiday experiences and our kids, but I do remember feeling happy that I was with the person I loved. I know I paid attention to the moment as it happened because I took a photo of her which preserves an image but not the feelings. My photo is locked away in an album in my home thousands of miles away but my memory is here with me now to be re-experienced and enjoyed separately from all the other moments of my life.

How do the memories of our life connect to form us?

A few years ago I read a wonderful essay by Jay Lemke in which he posed the question How do actions or events on one time scale come to add up to more than a series of isolated happenings? (1) I am illustrating one of the answers to this question. If we have a memory of a moment and we are able retrieve it, recognize its significance and meaning, and integrate it into our present thinking in a reflective way we are bringing that transient moment into the scale of a lifetime.

The very fact I can recall the moments I describe above enables me to connect me in my present to a life that was very different to the one I now live. As I look back I can give meanings to these moments that I could not give when they happened: six years after these particular moments my wife died of breast cancer. So memories like these have a special poignancy and are to be cherished. It is undoubtedly a coincidence that I am now in this space once again and I can connect so vividly to this moment of my life 24 years ago to illustrate the point I’m making that we can use our present to connect to the moments of our life that we remember. My sense of uniqueness is reinforced by the fact that I’m pretty sure that I am the only person who has ever lived to have had this experience and my memory of it. But perhaps we should also acknowledge that many experiences are co-created, as this one was, and each of the co-creators will have a different memory of the event. When one of them dies the other loses access to all their memories and this is one of the things we miss.

Ecology of connecting to the past

We can use the learning ecology framework we are developing and testing to explain the most important features of an ecology that purposely sets out to connect us to our past and to learn from it. Figure 1 provides a generalized interpretation and the narrative below illustrates how the framework might be customized.

Figure 1 An ecology for connecting us to our past life based on the learning ecology model I am developing (2)

There are times in our life where it is important for us to think about our past to understand ourselves better, to resolve an issue that is bothering us that originated in our past or perhaps to pass on our knowledge of our life to our children.  Five years ago, I reached a point in my life where I wanted to record the history of my family for myself, my children and, when they are old enough, my grandchildren.  My initial purpose was not to record and reflect on my own life but to record my parents lives and their reflections.

My ecology for learning emerged over a couple of years. It began with conversations with my mother and father on a visit to Australia. I recorded these and later transcribed them. I could then see that their stories of their lives could form the chapter for a book. So the idea of a book was born and it provided a context and purpose for me to think about my own story and the story of my first wife and also to find out about our ancestors. Affordance for learning was in my own life. I created a process in which I used my relationships with family members to gather their stories, photos and documents – the artefacts of our lives. I also used ancestry.com to search databases like census, and births, marriage and death certificates. These were my main resources together with my own memories. I created a space to think and write. and the act of writing was a very important part of the process for organizing and connecting my thoughts and reflecting on the life I had lived. The book was the artefact of my process.

So what is the educational value of this exploration?

The most obvious connection of using our present to explore the past is with the way we use reflection to examine our practice in order to learn how we might improve it. Many practice fields encourage or demand self-critical reflection whereby individuals are expected to reflect on a particular situation or critical incident that did not go well, to identify the reasons for what happened, and then identify lessons to inform future practice. Clearly there are parallels with the accounts in this issue but generally individuals do not create their own ecologies for deep reflection on their past: usually they engage in a formal procedure that is often linked to appraisal. Locating the process of connecting our current self to a past experience in order to demonstrate that we have learnt something useful within an accountability framework, provides a very different context for learning and personal development to what we are discussing here.

Perhaps a more useful and relevant connection is with higher education’s responsibility to develop leaners who can sustain themselves throughout long complex learning lives. This is the lifelong/lifewide learning context of an institution’s educational mission and it is the context in which the personal narratives in this magazine were created.

Higher education seems only to be mostly concerned with short time spans like the length of a module. Personal Development Planning (PDP) has encouraged longer time spans for reflection on the past and also a wider focus on experiences from different aspects of life. This is perhaps the most relevant educational context for the sorts of things we are concerned with in this issue. When I look back at my own experience as a student, of course my academic studies were important – they provided the knowledge I needed to become a geologist. But the experiences that enabled me to become the sort of geologist I wanted to be were the ones I created for myself – independent fieldwork, independent project and working in a tin mine.  These were the experiences that carried most meaning and value and these were the ones that I could draw lessons from in my future working life.

Encouraging learners to reflect on their life experiences (both academic and non-academic) and how they influence their beliefs, values and evolving identity, and facilitating and valuing this process, is an important way in which higher education can contribute to the development of learners who are resilient in the face of disruptions and setbacks, who can sustain themselves throughout the whole of their life.

Sources
1  Lemke J (2000) Across the scales of time, artefacts, activities and meanings in ecosocial systems. Mind Culture and Activity 7(4) 273-290 Available at: http://dantao.weebly.com/uploads/8/5/4/9/8549343/lemke2000.pdf
2 Jackson N J (2016) Exploring Learning Ecologies Chalk Mountain: Lulu