Creativity can be defined as developing unique actions or ideas by recombining existing actions, ideas or thoughts and applying them to new situations (Bateson & Martin, 2013, p. 55). This is often how artists describe their work, making the familiar strange or using the familiar in ways that are novel and surprising. Creativity is often the precursor to innovation, and can often involve a playful approach or the experience of play as a means of discovery. According to Bateson and Martin (2013), play involves breaking rules, and playful play means having fun breaking the rules. Many well-known artist and scientists have approached their work as play. Thomas Kuhn, (1962) likened scientific research to play. The idea of discovery as play also influenced scientist like Flemming in the discovery of penicillin and artist M.C. Escher’s development of staircases came from playing with ideas from mathematician Lionel and Roger Penrose (Bateson & Martin, 2013).

There are many ideas about what play is or could be. Play can be considered as a pleasurable, spontaneous, non-goal oriented activity. Barnett and Owens (2015) consider play to consist of anticipation, flow, and surprise. Play can be observed and studied, but it is also a felt emotion. Play has a long history of being linked to learning (Dewey 1944). In play, we are able to experiment with ideas, test theories, explore social relations, take risks, and reimagine the world (Mardell et al., 2016). States of mind highly conducive to learning, being engaged, relaxed and challenged, all occur in play.

Schechner (1988) explains the role of play in our lives, “Consider…playing as the underlying, always there, continuum of experience …. Ordinary life is meted out of playing but play continually squeezes through even the smallest holes… Work and other activities constantly feed on the underlying ground of playing, using the play mood for refreshment, unusual ways of turning things around, insights, breaks, openings and especially looseness” (p. 16).

While these ideas of play as learning have a long history, there has also been a separation of the body from its role in knowledge creation. Embodied knowing and an approach to knowledge making that engages with felt emotions has been a project for feminist epistemology. Creative education of place is interested in creativity and the role of play in learning as a way to engage with embodied knowing, the sensory experiences we have with places and relationships we develop with the more-than-human. Through creative practices, such as narrative writing, zine production, photo stories, and digital storytelling, we can begin to evoke our lived experiences for analysis and interpretation.  Creative practices help us to recall our sensory and embodied experiences by “awakening imagination, they have brought our bodies into play, excited our feelings, opened what have been called the doors of perception,” (Greene, 1995, p.28). Creative practices evoke our engagement in making, where making could be art, craft or writing.

Doing Creative Education of Place

Podcasts

The following are links to some of my students’ podcasts that they produced this year in our Environmental Education course. Please have a listen to their creative work:

 

 

 

I have collaborated with some of my students who were interesting in reflecting on their learning from the podcast. The following are their reflections:

COMING SOON

 

Zines

Creatively observing everyday places and writing about the embodied experience of home takes up the call to begin our critical and creative reflections of place in the locations we inhabit. The following are a few samples from my students this year.

 

Digital Storytelling of Place Studio

Coming soon: Narration as Assemblage

Develop your own writing practice and connections to place through the digital storytelling studio