Putting art in place by Dr Red Ruby Scarlet is a two-part professional learning series that focuses on art and how it can facilitate the development of relationships. That includes relationships with Country, children, and adults as well as with materials and technology to create a holistic artistic experience.
Often, educators may think they’re not ‘arty’ or ‘creative’, but when we focus less on expertise and more on relationships, we are able to create truly meaningful artistic experiences for children and educators. This in turn empowers them to put art in place in their everyday curriculum.
Discussion about the learning that arises from these arts practices will be entwined through beautiful examples of how relationships with Country, people, materials, technology, and knowledge are generated in practice in and in-between.
The program will answer questions such as:
- Who is the teacher?
- What counts as valid knowledge?
- What does learning look and feel like in human-nonhuman relations?
- How Indigenous cosmologies infused throughout all of these relationships?
Working this way takes the idea of the environment as third teacher from a human-led and controlled curriculum, to a collectively created one where place, materials and non-Western knowledge flourish. This allow us to centre arts practice as the nucleus of learning in early childhood curriculum.
By taking this approach to putting art in place, children will thrive and educators and teachers will benefit as equally successful learners.
