Outdoor Learning Family Class makes mud with Heather Posner

In honor of Earth Day, our Public Programs Manager Heather Posner shares some thoughts about environmental programming for children:

“Cow Hollow School in the Presidio shares some lovely affinities with our Museum: they also have a Patrick Dougherty sculpture, access to bountiful natural resources, and a strong belief in the importance of sharing nature with children.  This blog, written by one of their teachers, suggests some wonderful tips about what TO DO with young children outside, but especially poignant is the “What to Avoid With Young Children.”  It can be easy to “teach” children how to take care of our word through didactic messages, but ultimately spending time playing outside allows children to construct their own respect for nature which will last longer than any bumper sticker wisdom.  This beautiful quote at the end is an eloquent example of how to foster this in the lives of the children we know:

“I was thinking, how do I teach kids to love nature and understand the importance of conservation? I don’t want to tell them, love the planet, love gardening, or do everything to ‘save the planet.’ I want to do what my father did- love it myself and share the joy of it with the children.” -Tanya Ellsworth, September 2007

- Heather Posner, Public Programs Manager

Creating the custom laminated 40 foot long bamboo “spine” for the Kraken has been the most challenging design aspect of this project.  Building and leveling the form and then gluing, filling and clamping the bamboo slats – let’s just say it was a right of passage.

When it was all said and done, we used 42 clamps to hold the spine together!

The triangular base of the sculpture is mostly complete.  This week we’ll be installing and fine-tuning the A-frame that holds the spine; as well as reinforcing the spine with some fancy u-bolts.

I recently learned that Mickey Hart is working on a project that will, in grandiose terms, “turn the Golden Gate Bridge into a giant wind harp”.  Link to article here.

The Creative Kraken – inspired by the Golden Gate Bridge, Angler Fish, Da Vinci’s Catapult, and the skeleton of a Grey Whale – is in fact a giant interactive wind harp that people and the wind can play with.

We hope to see you at the Museum, Mickey!

At our last meeting at the museum, I chalked an actual-sized outline of the installation for the museum staff to get a sense of the scale of the piece; 12 feet wide at the opening of the base, 17 foot long legs, 15 foot tall supports, and a 35 foot long cantilevered spine which will suspend our “lure” (a collection of Indian copper bells and maritime doodads).

One exciting aspect of this participatory design process has been the decision to build our sculpture out of bamboo and our subsequent partnership with bamboo building experts Darrel Deboer and Kevin Rowell.

I spent the earlier part of this week on Darrel’s property in El Sobrante working with artist Brit Howard to begin construction.  First we were careful to select the best pieces of bamboo – 20 foot long sections of Phyllostachys bambusoides.

Then we set about cutting, arranging and bolting our poles.

I’m off to Costa Rica for 2 weeks and when I return, we’ll complete the piece and install it at the Museum!!  Stay tuned…

Is Sweden’s Classroom-Free School the Future of Learning?
by Liz Dwyer; re-posted by Zakary Zide

The traditional setup of school classrooms—straight rows of desks with accompanying chairs—doesn’t do much to foster creativity or collaboration. Many experts have proposed redesigning classroom furniture, but a Swedish school system wants to take things a step further. Vittra, which operates 30 schools in Sweden, is seeking to ensure learning takes place everywhere on campus by eliminating classrooms altogether.

The newest Vittra school, Telefonplan, opened its doors last August. Designed by architecture firm Rosan Bosch, the Stockholm-area campus seems more like a creative space you’d find at Google or Pixar than a school at all. Students can work independently on their laptops while lounging on one of the “sitting islands” in the photo above. If they need to collaborate with their peers on a project, they can take advantage of spaces like “the village”—a tiny house for group work—or the more open “organic conversation furniture” pictured below.

Jannie Jeppesen, the principal of Vittra Telefonplan writes on the school’s website that the design is intended to stimulate “children’s curiosity and creativity” and offer them opportunities for both collaborative and independent time. Vittra doesn’t award traditional grades, either—students are taught in groups according to level—so maximizing diverse teaching and learning situations is a priority.

The open nature of the campus and the unusual furniture arrangements reflect the school’s philosophy that “children play and learn on the basis of their needs, curiosity, and inclination.” That’s true for kids all over the world, so let’s hope educators in other countries begin to pay attention.

More interesting photos and content here.

The current program in Art Studio 10 is inspired by artist Patrick Dougherty and his natural sculpting process. Using willow, reed, cardboard and burlap, children and grownups are encouraged to explore and experiment. The environment of the space inspires collaboration as visitors create, interact with, and name the sculptures. Our works in progress grow and evolve through techniques such as weaving, tangling, looping, attaching, threading, twirling, wrapping and bending.

After considerable discussion and consideration, we realized that we were focusing too much of the design on the base of the installation.  We had gotten carried away with making a really cool looking car that had a dangly thing hanging off of it.  We had to back up and remember that the most interesting, compelling, and playful component of the prototypes were the bouncy, dangly arms, and their sonic qualities.

So we decided to emphasize and elevate the bouncy length of the arm in order to maximize it’s playfulness and interactivity.   Calling upon the nearby coast for inspiration, we thought, why not hold the arm up with the architecture of a whale skeleton.  With a backward looking eye, we turned to the site’s historical past for additional material, engineering and aesthetic clues.  Once an active military base, we didn’t have to look much further than Davinci’s catapult (and mechanical drawings).

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, start your engines.  Or non-violent catapults-cum-giant-interactive-wind-harps, as the case may be.

Through the research process, I have been able to identify and ground the design language in the history of the Museum’s site, including it’s relationship to the military, it’s proximity to the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as the local weather conditions.

I also found some incredible inspiration images!  I’m now a minor expert in the design typology of antique horse drawn sleighs and carriages, vintage tanks, tractors and wooden wagon wheels.  It’s been interesting to follow my thought process as I connect the design dots between angler fish, snow mobiles, a pair of earrings, steam powered bulldozers, a radiator fan, the sculptures of Martin Puryear and the architecture of Rena Dumas.

It was somewhere between the angler fish and the radiator fan that I started thinking about my creative process.  Studies (Getzels 1988) have found that creative people tend to:
• Have a “discovery orientation”
• Are more risk taking than average
• Flexible to changing direction
• Possess a willingness to question norms and assumptions
• Ask novel questions
• Have wide interests

I have found that through the process of gathering a mountain of information and following countless leads, I eventually reach a kind of creative saturation / tipping point.  At times it feels like getting sucked into a creative vortex (in a good way).

It goes something like this:
After immersing myself in the subject -examining it from as many angles as time and budget will allow, and after deconstructing it down to it’s essential components- I find that I have to stop consciously thinking about it.  I have to allow my mind some time to digest and process all on its own, in the background of my life.  And then a day or so later, I’ll be looking at a magazine or a movie or a plant and all of these ideas, images associations and connections will start to rush out of mind – and I scramble to capture as many as I can.

I’ve found that you can’t engineer lucky accidents and creative solutions, but through diligence you can trust (anticipate) that they will eventually happen.

During a recent Connections program, it seemed all too quiet at the front corner of the Outdoor Learning Lab. When I rounded the corner to enter the digging node, I heard a soft splat-splat-splat. A solitary girl, 4 years old, was standing with her belly pressed against the stainless steel dirt trough. She was concentrating intently; lifting mud by the handful and slinging it gently back onto the surface of an expertly mixed bog of soil and water. A smile slowly spread across her face as I watched her submerge first her fingertips, then her palms and finally her wrists in the cool mud puddle.

Conservationist Rachel Carson told us:
Being with a child is largely a matter of becoming receptive to what lies all around you. It is learning again to use your eyes, ears, nostrils, and fingertips, opening up the disused channels of sensory impression. For most of us knowledge comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind. One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”

Before environmental stewardship comes empathy for the natural world. Before empathy come direct and authentic encounters with nature. Mud puddles provide children with a place to become immersed. A child might explore the possible changes in color, sound, texture, and smell as she mixes water into soil. She might notice the tickle of tangled roots from the grasses last growing in that soil. She may wonder why a tiny millipede is running off in such a rush as she mixes and pours. Or perhaps she’ll simply absorb how the reflection of late afternoon sun bouncing off of the surface of wet earth can make her feel calm, connected, and secure. This is a beginning. This is the purpose of a mud puddle.
- Heather Miller, Connections Manager

We have been exploring some options for programming to coincide with artist Patrick Dougherty’s creative process. He built the beloved Haywire willow sculpture in Lookout Cove (see our video saying goodbye to Haywire) and will be returning in January 2012 to create something new. We have been experimenting with bending, weaving, snagging, and flexing reed to understand the weaving/sculpting process and make it our own.