Experiencing our world as 'visual white noise'

We are daily surrounded by a material world that 'someone' had to create. We daily experience the results of the creativity of others, and much of this in our daily lived experience we take for granted. We pass these things all the time, but pay them no mind at all.

Last night I joined a group of friends and former colleagues for a meal (Quartz Restaurant, Rolleston), and my attention was caught by these quite overt examples of creativity that I suspect, for almost all diners, are simply visual 'background noise', perhaps we could describe these things as the material world equivalent of 'white noise'. (I would add that there is no judgement on the quality of these pieces, merely on their presence).

This morning I sat in the waiting area of my doctor's surgery. I was making an effort NOT to look at my phone but rather to notice the world around me, and my eye was caught by these lovely shapes.

These are all examples of some act of creativity from someone, somewhere, some time. It struck me that these things merge into a world of 'visual white noise' unless we are deliberate and intentional in 'noticing' them, in really looking at the world around us.

Now I was not trained in the visual arts. I was trained into the world of economics, the 'dismal science', a world with which I fell out of love some years ago. 

You may have heard some of the jokes about economists:

"Did you know that economists have successfully predicted 5 of the last 3 recessions?"

or ..

"If you put all of the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion."

It's not a profession with which one normally associates 'noticing', even though it bases its understandings on large volumes of statistical data and creatively imagined theoretical models. It's just a shame that the two don't coincide more often.

In contrast, my very incomplete understanding of the teaching of the creative arts involves cultivating the deliberate and intentional 'noticing', the observation, of the world around us. I believe this to be true of the poetry that I try to write, based as it so often is on the 'noticing' of emotion, or people, or events.

Elwyn Richardson made direct reference to this, when he encouraged the children in his care to observe the world, and to capture what they saw, whether in clay, on paper, or in movement. In his book 'In the early world', he says:

"A great deal of the school work was directed towards establishing attitudes of awareness in the children. Thus in art and poetry we had come to see that accuracy was an important part of the work and that it was closely linked with the individual's awareness of his environment. .... Some were observers of nature and showed a keener observation of scientific detail; others had a feeling for space relationships and noticed, for example, that a bird can fly within the bare branches of a winter tree. I think this awareness is also the basis of learning processes such as those found in arithmetic and spelling." (Richardson, Pge 125)

I think it is one of the benefits of learning in the 'arts' generally that we learn to notice, to observe, to see (or hear, or feel) the detail, or more generally to simply 'see'. I have become an advocate for arts education because it supports the development of such skills which are then transferable to whatever other area of learning we care to name: sciences, mathematics, technology... etc

Perhaps more particularly though, a broader arts education allows us to better appreciate the world in which we live, to appreciate beauty, cleverness, and problem solving, to appreciate creativity, rather than walk 'zombie like' through our lives experiencing our world as 'visual white noise'. Perhaps this is one of the secrets behind the impact of creativity on our wellbeing.

Creative synergies, creative cities, that 'learn, create, share'

I'm a bit of a dreamer, eh. At the mere thought of an idea, my mind's off out into space, to look back at what could be. Does anyone remember when the City Council used the phrase 'a city of possibility' as it's marketing phrase? I love the idea of 'possibility'. And I love the idea of system change. I love Ewan MacIntosh's concept of the BHAG, the Big Hairy Audacious Goal. (As Steve W would say of me, I have a tendency to try to boil the ocean, and as a consequence I then need around me people who can say 'righto, jolly good Robin, now sit down and have a cup of tea, and let's look at what we can actually achieve').

Over the past seven years I've been involved as Tumuaki of Hornby High School, and in to The Manaiakalani Programme (TMP) boots and all. The programme is a pedagogically driven one, employing the pedagogy 'learn, create, share'. The impact of the pedagogy is 'amplified' through the application of digital technologies and devices. I've written extensively on this blog about the significance of creativity at the heart of the pedagogy, and worked assiduously to make creativity the centre of the kura itself.

I have over that time been a Board member of the Greater Christchurch Schools Network (GCSN) trust board, an organisation committed to bridging the digital divide in Ōtautahi Christchurch. This has amongst other things involved mahi to support the most vulnerable in Ōtautahi with digital connection, and devices, and also to the building of technological skills and capability with young people whānau, and schools.

I have also been involved in a minor capacity with the work of Dr Cheryl Doig and Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch (AO-LCC), an organisation that "champions learning as a way to transform lives, communities, organisations and cities". AO-LCC works proactively with other organisations focussed on digital equity - DECA and DEAA for example. My own involvement has just 'ramped up' as I have accepted a role as a Trustee with AO-LCC. 

Having stepped back from Principalship I find myself able to take the time to think about these 'organisations' and their kaupapa in ways that I wanted to do before, but for which I rarely found the mental resources. I tried to capture their relative roles in this diagram. 

 

This doesn't capture the full breadth and complexity of what they each do, just some key points. You can check out their web sites to gather a full and complete view. The intersection of the mahi of all three is the aspiration to improve digital equity for those most vulnerable in our communities.

With the time for some uninterrupted thinking, it occurred to me that there is much much more to this. The heart of the matter for all three organisations is the promotion of better more fulfilling lives created by better learning. I wondered then if the unspoken ingredient of the work of all three organisations is creativity. It may be more or less explicit, maybe more or less overt, for each organisation, but I think it's right in there. I wonder if it looks like this:

There is much that has been written about 'creative cities', a concept that does appear to have progressed from the initial conceptions focussed on cultural creative industries, to the wider focus on creativity and innovation in all that we do. Charles Landry wrote about this in his piece 'Lineages of the Creative City'. 1 

Landy says: 

"The creativity of the creative city is about lateral and horizontal thinking, the capacity to see parts and the whole simultaneously as well as the woods and the trees at once." (Landy, Pge 13). There is a growing literature around this concept. A search in GoogleScholar on 4 May 2023 yielded 4,890,000 hits.... <gulp>

That sounds familiar..  at Hornby High School I wanted to try to take creativity beyond the traditional creative and performing arts, and technologies. We saw it explicitly in maths last year, for example. 

The wellbeing benefits of including creativity in our lives and our learning are also well covered, in particular with the work in Aotearoa New Zealand by Professor Peter O'Connor (University of Auckland). In the 2020 paper 'Replanting creativity in post normal times' 2  (worth quoting at length) he said:

"Increased interest in the relationship between arts, health and well-being has resulted in the emergence of a distinct field of practice over the last 60 years. The term, arts for health and wellbeing, is now used internationally as an umbrella for a diverse, interdisciplinary field of activity which draws from arts, health, psychology, education, community and youth development practices and theories. Growth of the field has been so rapid that when charting the rise of arts in community health practice in the UK, Mike White (2016) described the arts for health movement broadly as a “small-scale global phenomenon” (p. 41)." (O'Connor Page 18)

What ties these ideas together?  I am wondering if it is the 'learn, create, share' pedagogy? Here is a simple explanation of how these three words are interpreted within the school context.

Would these three words, explained in this way, grab more attention, open up more opportunities, increase engagement, across the incredibly diverse communities that are cities? Would this make the AO-LCC message easier to sell? 

Cities generally, and ours specifically, already have many wonderful learning opportunities. We have great pre-schools and schools, multiple universities, Polytechnics and research establishments, a multitude of private training establishments, a vibrant civic library service and a wonderful creative sector. We have many 'creatives' resident in 'our place'. 

Is the key to bring them all together under one banner (AO-LCC, for example), the opportunities unpacked using the Manaiakalani kaupapa?  I don't mean the occasional one page advertisement in the city newspapers (to coin a very old fashioned phrase). I mean something vibrant, ongoing, consistent and coherent, something that is regular, overt, and helpful

Is the issue less about what opportunities there are, than about promoting their coherence for the population at large? If we had more people learning, creating, sharing, would we then be able to shift more overtly to be a 'creative city'? Here's the thing: I genuinely believe we KNOW how to do this stuff, the knowledge, the awareness, the capability, are 'already in the room'. We need to 'own' this fact, we need to network, to magnify our impact. There are quite a number of 'connectors' or networkers already in the city (and I don't mean business networkers whose aim is enhanced private profit). People like Cheryl Doig and Vicki Buck, Steve Wakefield and .. goodness me.. that would be a very long list. You get the idea.

What could it look like if we thought about this across a whole city, a 'learning City', a city where the digital divide has been reduced significantly? Maybe then we would be a city of possibility? Or, as AO-LCC has pitched its 'Learning Days' this year ... a city of curiosity?

**************

1. 'Lineages of the Creative City', Charles Landry , http://charleslandry.com/panel/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/03/Lineages-of-the-Creative-City.pdf , last accessed 4 May 2023. 

2. 'Replanting creativity in post normal times', Peter O’Connor (Director, Centre for Arts and Social Transformation), Professor Michael Anderson, Associate Professors Kelly Freebody and Paul Ginns, The University of Sydney, October 2020 

 

The power of risk taking..

On my very last 'Tumuaki walk through' of learning spaces at Hornby High School, I saw many wonderful things. I saw engagement, focus, fun, laughter, and creativity.

One small interaction in particular has stuck in my memory. A Year 7 & 8 class  (with teacher Patricia) had been reading what you'd describe as a 'sophisticated picture book'. The students were in the process of re-imagining various parts of the story with their own images, and text, creating new metaphors (at least, I hope I have that right, Patricia). The atmosphere was focussed and 'buzzy'.. those in education will know what that looks, sounds, feels, like. It is the sound, the look, the feel, of an effective teacher at work, and it was what I regularly saw all around the kura in those walkthroughs.

I stopped to chat to a young one man who was drawing tentative lines, erasing, drawing, erasing etc. I asked why, and he said that he couldn't 'get it right' (he was copying some parts of the original image from the story book so that he could then re-imagine).

I suggested that in fact he should just draw it as he saw it. I got out my phone, searched a Picasso self portrait, and showed it to him.

(Source: Creative Commons, https://richmondartcenter.org/instructables/picasso-self-portraits-2/)

I said 'Does that look like a photo' and then said maybe that's how Picasso saw himself. I said, just feel free to draw what you see. No-one else can see what you see, so no-one can tell you that you are right or wrong. I also said, and anyway if it doesn't go right, so what? I told him to make as many mistakes as he could because the best way to learn is to make mistakes, but to stop erasing and simply draw. 

I (deliberately) turned away for a minute or two, and then looked back. There he was drawing bold lines, shading, sketching, his hand going nowhere near the eraser. And there was a smile on his face.

I'd encouraged him to take a risk, to stop being fearful of consequences, and just do it. I regret not going back an hour or so later to see what he had produced.

Isn't this the way with so many of us, and our learning and our creativity? How many of us tell ourselves that we can't draw? That we are tone deaf? That we can't do maths? That we can't dance?

That's why we opted early on to state that one of our areas of strategic intent at Hornby High School was to encourage risk taking. What deliberate acts of teaching, what deliberate acts of relationship building, do teachers and schools need to foster in this regard to support greater creativity?

Creativity means different things to different people, at different times, but if we keep it front and centre (as we can when empowered by the Manaiakalani kaupapa, and the 'learn, create, share' pedagogy) learners are the winners, kura are the winners, the world is the winner. This risk taking thing is pretty powerful, eh...

Final post as Tumuaki of Hornby High School

When I began this professional blog seven years ago I had one key purpose in mind.

It was originally meant to document our Hornby High School journey for our community to see and celebrate. Over the seven years it has taken on other purposes too. 

It has allowed me to clarify my thinking as I have written lines describing what I have done and seen, and more importantly what others have done.

It has allowed me to keep our vision (a centre of creative excellence) to the forefront for our staff team and our community. 

And it has allowed me to model something important that we expect from all of our learners (staff and students alike): the practice of reflecting and blogging, an essential piece of the 'share' component of our 'learn, create, share' pedagogy and of our participation in the Manaiakalani kaupapa. This in particular has been transformational, something that is life changing for many akonga and many communities.

The Hornby High School part of my own journey is now at an end, although I am hopeful that the Hornby Hornby High School journey towards creative excellence can and will continue.  

I am grateful that the Hornby High Board of Trustees has agreed to pass the intellectual property rights to this blog to me so that I might be allowed to continue to develop my own thinking in the place, building on this past seven years of mahi, and to share that thinking with others. Their generosity is gratefully received.

So this is my last post as Tumuaki of Hornby High School. Future posts here will be a reflection of my thinking not as Tumuaki but as a private individual.

It seemed fitting that I share this piece of my own creativity at this point in time - a poem I crafted to reflect the end of my formal time in schools, the end to a 44 year career, a career that did indeed start when chalk was the norm, when overhead projectors were the new technology challenging teachers, when quite. a few teachers still wore gowns, and when schools were so often dull dreary environments of well worn and chipped paint work.

Haere rā, e kia ora,  e hoa mā!!!!

Footnote to the universe

After yesterday's post, I received this poem created by Joanne C on our team, her poetical version of yesterday's blog post.

What does this say? It says everything about our organisational culture, about 'how we do things around', about who we are.

It says staff feel comfortable:

• being creative
• reframing what I have said
• sharing what they are thinking with me
• sharing what they are thinking with everyone else
• taking risks in sharing

What an environment t work in, what ba culture to be. apart of, what an amazing group of colleagues. Our vision as 'he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence' is alive and well. It is real, it is being fed, nurtured, cultivated.  How do I know? Staff are themselves prepared to indulge their creativity and to take risks in sharing. Thanks Joanne... ka mau te wehi e hoa!!!!

Sometimes the universe joins the dots ...

Sometimes the universe connects the dots for you. Sometimes, the universe screams at you, screams the message "hey hey hey stupid.. can't you see?" Call it serendipity, call it synchronicity, call it what you like, but I've had one of those mornings.

It began with an interview with a new grad for a teaching position. I asked the interviewee what they thought were the necessary conditions for creativity to flourish. Included in the answer was the observation that creativity is a very personal thing, it comes with and from our personal responses to our world. She also talked about needing to be able to connect with our cultural identity, having and knowing that sense of self. Hardly new I know, but I needed to be reminded of that.

Then a very good colleague (Anne) popped in with a small piece of mahi. She then thanked me for sharing my poetry, and gave me a copy of a poem that she had written 30 years ago, something deeply personal. It was a very good poem. And it left me with LES ('leaky eye syndrome'). It impacted for me at a deeply emotional level, it dug down into my emotional self, that place where the spark of creativity resides.

I then had to make a short trip in the car, and on the radio they were playing Mussorgsky's 'Night on Bare Mountain'. I recalled first hearing it as a child, and then seeing the interpretation of the music that appeared in the 1940 Disney movie 'Fantasia'. The music, the memory, the mental imagery, were deep, profound, and moving. I was right back as the young child who had first experienced the music, and the movie. Strong emotional connection enhances memory and learning (perhaps more than almost anything else?)

Finally on a walk around, I came into Patricia's classroom. She had the students interpreting a picture book, with their own versions of the story and the imagery. The students were deeply engaged, you could almost 'see', and you could definitely 'feel',  the creativity in the learning space. This was deep connection, deep meaningful engagement, built on the back of strong positive relationships.

Students with their 'drafts', all a WIP

None of that (I think) is rocket science. We have known all of this. It was interesting that the universe pushed all four of these things at me in one morning.

As human beings, while we talk of the struggle of the artist, the isolation of the artist, as lying at the centre of creativity, I am wondering if that sort of creativity is the exception. Maybe creativity is more generally the result of emotional connection, within ourselves and with each other.

And so this led me to the big question: how do schools build this emotional connection, this relational connection, for and with our learners? My premise (to restate it) is that we need to do this if we are to create optimal conditions for creativity, if we are to nurture and to grow wellbeing, connection, and personal growth for our rangatahi, and for our kaiako. After all, that's what our national curriculum says.

And the final piece of this stream of consciousness was a presentation three of us made at a wellbeing conference hosted by Christ's College yesterday. Our premise was that building strong relationships, and focussing on creativity, are the best ways of meeting the wellbeing needs of our learners, and our kaiako, 

I am always looking for coherence in what we do, and there it is right there. Our Wānanga structures, and our focus on creativity, support improved relationships, and emotional connection, essential for creativity, essential for personal growth, essential if we are to create empathetic young people. 

That doesn't bely the need for deep knowledge and high skill levels. These are an implicit part of this.

This is all about being human, about making strong emotional connection, about seeing what we have in common rather than what makes us difference. Surely this is key to a better society?

If we connect this with our Manaiakalani kaupapa 'Learn, Create, Share', we could reach the conclusion that our kaupapa, when effectively implemented, supports deep connection that enhances our humanity. Too long a draw of the bow?

And all of that leaves me with the big question that continues to haunt me" what does effective leadership that enhances wellbeing and creativity actually look like? And have we come close?

Inspiration on a lazy Sunday afternoon: the Hornby music tradition

 In a 'previous life' I worked alongside pictorial archivists. I was always fascinated by their common question 'what's in the picture?' What are we seeing, what do we think is going on here?

I could ask that question here. It looks like a music duo performing in a beautiful setting. And it was.. the husband and wife duo 'Rockabella' (Nicky and Reuben) playing on a beautiful summer-like autumn afternoon at a beautiful bar/restaurant called 'The Black Door' located in Lincoln just outside Ōtautahi Christchurch.

I wouldn't be posting this here if there weren't a really interesting story here. Reuben was a member of the Hornby High School band 'Outer Control' that won Smokefree Rockquest in 1989. The members were Bobby Kennedy, Clinton Harris, Reuben Hiku, Pearl Runga, Hamish George, Glen Teasdale, Maree Maxwell (nee Blowers), Sarah Sharfe, Lisa Inglis, Lisa Wilson, Kate Hewson, Nelly Sione, and Teena Edens (now Edens-Finlay).

Here is a video of the band in 1990, the year after, again entering Smokefree Rockquest:

Two members of the band (Bobby and Clinton) went on to be members of kiwi band Opshop too.

Below is Reuben's younger brother Clayton, a musician in his own right, and currently assistant HOD of music at another secondary school in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Clayton was head student at Hornby in his Year 13 year.

Early on in the afternoon, one of the audience members was Clinton Harris, another member of 'Outer Control'. Clinton moved back to Ōtautahi a year ago, and currently has a demanding role in mental health. He commented that music is his 'release', his de-stressor from his work.

Let me interpret that: his creativity is his release from a stressful job, it is one way in which he maintains his balance in life. Reuben is a self employed businessman, as is Nicky. They both do stressful jobs. I suspect that for each of them their music, their creativity, is their 'release'. Professor Peter O'Connor and his team at the University of Auckland have written about the positive impact of a focus on creativity on our wellbeing.

These amazing people reflect a rich music tradition from Hornby High School. Of course back in the '80s and '90s creative excellence wasn't the 'vision' for the kura and its members (students and staff alike). There were however inspired and inspiring teachers who nurtured this talent, amongst them Pete Rainey, who was one of the founders of the Smokefree Rockquest. Both Clinton and Reuben talked of the inspiration that they got from Pete. Never underestimate the impact of one inspiring teacher. Professor Hattie's research says that the teacher makes the difference.

And never under estimate the power of a unifying vision in creating and building coherence, and commitment. Similarly never under estimate the impact of a coherent clearly espoused pedagogy (in our case 'Learn Create Share') on staff, learners, and outcomes.

Now teachers have been inspiring students since .. well 'forever' really. My hope, my expectation, is that when we identify creative excellence as our vision, we are more likely to inspire teachers to inspire students. Perhaps it's that teachers feel as if they have 'permission' to be that inspiring person that they really are, they feel that they have permission to inspire the young people with whom they work. Perhaps it's that more teachers feel that they have permission to inspire. Perhaps that is because they understand that the kura values this as an outcome of their mahi. What's more, I reckon that over time we are more likely to gather together teachers with this purpose in mind. That's what it feels like to be a part of the Hornby community. It's all a matter of being intentional and deliberate about this end goal. 

And it's not a bad idea to think about this in the context of the current teacher action in support of their 2023 contract claim. We need more teachers. We need more teachers who inspire our young people. We need them now. I feel privileged to be able to work amongst just such a group of educators.

I still hear those cries  of -'teachers.. overpaid and underworked, 12 weeks holiday a year, work 9-3" .. you know the sort. My answer to that is always the same: "if it's such an attractive profession, why aren't there queues of people lining up to become teachers?" If that were true, if teaching were such an attractive profession, we should have no recruitment problems at all.

Ask the average principal what it's like trying to recruit teachers right now, and what it has been like for possibly the last decade ... there is a shortage. Maybe it isn't as attractive, maybe it isn't as soft an option, as those on the neoliberal right would have us believe.

Footnote: having a free Sunday afternoon to spend listening to cool music over a glass of wine is a rarity in my life, and I reckon in the lives of most teachers. Whether as a classroom teacher or a Tumuaki, Sunday afternoons are normally spent working. Living the life.. eh