Theme: Intelligent Materials: Using natural and recycled materials to support creativity in the Early Years
For: Artists, early years practitioners, heads of centres, cultural managers, local authority advisors, early years professionals, arts and cultural organisations.

Programme:

10.00 Earlyarts Welcome: Penny Hay, Director of Research 5x5x5=creativity, Senior Lecturer, Arts Education, Bath Spa University

10.15 Intelligent Materials: presentation by Penny Hay: using intelligent materials with Early Years children including the House of Objects in North Tyneside and Remida in Reggio Emilia

11.15 Case study: Twerton Infant School Bath, sharing current practice about changing the learning environment

12.00 Earlyarts Knowledge: speed networking, key events coming up in the sector, review of the latest research and publications.

12.30 Lunch and Networking (please bring your own lunch or money for the cafe)

13.30 CPD Workshop: chose one of two practical sessions led by workshop leaders James Aldridge, Amy Houghton and Alison Harper, artists with 5x5x5=creativity. Build your practice-based skills at the same time as developing clear links into the Early Years Foundation Stage framework.

15.30 Sharing Experiences/Feedback, learning journeys and delivery plans.

15.45 Dates of next meetings and finish.


Book your place online at www.earlyarts.co.uk


CPD Workshop Choices:

Workshop 1: Using intelligent materials: reclaimed and recycled, with Amy Houghton and Alison Harper

Amy and Alison are 5x5x5=creativity artists with extensive experience of using visual arts, installations and construction approaches to early learning. Amy and Alison will be running a workshop exploring textile techniques and processes to investigate ideas around the nature, use and ethics of recycled and natural materials. The activities will offer the opportunity to get physical and work collaboratively to make a structure that will grow throughout the session and can be adapted to individual spaces. This will be a hands on workshop that will allow time for thought provoking discussion that will be stimulated by the making process and the materials used.

This workshop will provide a pedagogic understanding of creative approaches including:

• Understanding why intelligent materials are important and how they have an impact on children’s learning and development.
• Using and developing processes and creative strategies to develop ideas in different materials
• Identifying what aspects of the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum can be addressed by encouraging creative learning using arts approaches.

Amy is an artist trained in textiles practice. Her arts practice currently uses animation, video and porcelain to explore the hidden and revealed histories and stories related to old textiles and photographs placed in the context of our lives in the present. Amy has experience being a project leader of commissions, residencies, exhibitions, arts management and education and offers considerable experience and enthusiasm in innovative arts education and participatory arts practice. For more information please visit: www.amyhoughton.co.uk

Alison Harper is a textile artist who has shown her work widely and co-curated many group shows. She has an MA Design from Bath Spa University where she is a visiting lecturer in mixed media textiles. She has begun work on a Phd research degree, exploring materials, the meaning of making and sustainability issues. She has worked on many school and community projects with groups ranging from pre-school children through to elderly participants. Alison enjoys the challenge of working in educational settings and finds the experience informs and inspires her own practice. She is becoming more aware of the responsibility that artists have in making work that is relevant to society and the challenges the future presents www.alisonharper.net

Workshop 2: People, Places and Materials: Learning through Relationship: James Aldridge

‘ …a new theory of child development must be evolved… the infant is born into not only a social, but an ecological context… from the earliest moments of life, the infant has an awareness not only of human touch, but of the breeze on her skin, variations in light and colour, temperature, texture and sound.’ Anita Barrows – The Ecopsychology of child development

This workshop will explore the benefit of creative, investigative play, using natural materials and referencing local outdoor spaces, for learning in the Early Years. James will draw from real project examples, using discussion and hands-on exploration to share a variety of approaches, exploring the resulting benefits for children and practitioners of working with natural materials. James is an artist working with 5x5x5=creativity with extensive experience of working with early years children including:

• Exploring what different natural materials could mean to different children.
• Identifying what aspects of the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum can be addressed through this approach
• The contextualisation of learning – learning through real-life experiences of people, places and materials

James Aldridge is a visual artist and creative learning consultant, using visual arts processes to explore the relationship between people and the world around them. He exhibits artwork, runs participatory projects and carries out consultancy work for educational, art and heritage organisations under the name Creative Ecology. James has worked with 5x5x5=creativity as an artist since 2005, and more recently, as a mentor to the Kingston-Upon-Thames cluster. For more information visit www.jamesaldridge-artist.co.uk