enthusiastic education

saucepan+welly @ TedxExeter

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:11:00 +0000

Ponies in the mist!

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:35:00 +0000

earth hoof, a cast of the real in rich leaf mould, then, in wonder, mist moist ponies are challenging our expectations and dreams

Farm visits in moving images!

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:24:00 +0000

Now it is really nice when someone with a camera comes on a visit and then to have the time to do a little bit of editing.

Parsnips

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:46:00 +0000

Parsnips, a gallery on Flickr.

Working with Love Local Food in partnership with the Carousel Project at Beacon Heath Children's Centre making ... parsnip crisps!

new birth and grumbling badgers

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 19:45:00 +0000

The last of whole year of visits with West Exe Nursery. Exploring the farm with children for whom farm explorations were often not what they had done lots of. There have been a whole range of key experiences. This time discovering a newly born calf was a beautiful moment of stillness. We had looked at Tom's mural of mother and baby before turning the corner and having day old calf watching with curiousity the curious fascination of both children and parents.
Balancing this through contrast was a charge of grumbling badgers down the railway cutting. Face painted, claw fingered and swag bag bums swaying as we charged along past the excavations of real badgers who were doubtless deep in the underground fastness of the set wondering in badger dreams what all the noise was about!
And where is all of this going? Take the breadth of 2 hours on the farm and families have challenges and senses and imaginings to share and remember. I am looking at the toolkit I use now. There is a range of activities and stories embedded around the trail we use most often. I want to extend this both in the knowledge I have and the delivery I use. Great fun!

Exploring!

noreply@blogger.com (enthused) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:57:00 +0000

I have been working with Devon Carousel on a project with families and the pre school in Stoke Canon. This has led to some explorations of the beautiful environment of the grounds of the Killerton along with our home patch around Stoke Canon Church. We have made hedgehog houses, been birds, played hide and seek in the orchard, seen apples pressed and created shadow puppets among other thing.
It is always an interesting challenge working with a mixed range of very young children. Story and activity has to make sense in a visual and dynamic way without relying on the understanding of words. Creation has to be child focussed. Shadow puppets this morning work best away from the drawn and cut out and more into assembling ripped think paper. That shape is the body and that one is the wing and there is the bit for the beak. Some how the result works on the screen in a way that the crisply cut out patterns do not. I like the way that my practice and technique evolves and adapts. I guess I have been doing this kind of work for over 20 years but still it is new. There was a lovely moment talking to a couple of the builders who had arrived to start preparing the church for the new bells. They saw the magic of what was happening as children pecked and soared and flapped in the church yard and saw what we were doing by linking dance with the creation of, on the one hand, an imaginative shadow story and the other the creation of a practical garden for wildlife.

Food on the farm, the courgette pancake and the perils of beeswax

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:20:00 +0000

This summer there has been a whole sequence of sessions involving bees. I have been lucky enough to have a demonstration hive with a glorious honeycomb hanging from a bar. This is a real object of woonder with which to draw people in. It still gets me how these creatures with a brain the size of pencil dot, and a sharp pencil at that, can constuct these hexagons of proportion and pattern. Modelling little beeswax bees has proved fun although sometimes fiddly. It is good to find materials that are not everyday. And the perils? Well discovering that the pot of local honey has somehow opened itself all over the story bag, looking from the empty honey tray to the rather sticky and ever so slightly guilty farm dog and then to discover that the local wasp population have taken a liking to the hive!

The courgette pancake has become a favourite recipe with visitors. The joy is in the harvesting of the courgettes from their tyre bound growing patch, the gathering of eggs warm from the chicken and then preparing and cooking out in the field over a wood fire. Finally local honey is drizzled over them. Yum indeed!! I think that this is when farm based learning really comes into its own.

The Art of Discussion

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 22:56:00 +0000

I have been looking at a selection of discussion forums options for the Carousel Project so that we can plan and review for the various locations without having to resort to emails everywhere. Facebook discussions can be a little too open so I have tried Wall.fm (a little slow although the range of tools is good), Staction (interesting but more akin to a facebook wall than a discussion group) Jabbster (very simple and workable) Ning (looks good but I didn't want to hand over credit card details to set a trial!) Big Tent (range of tools but too much really) Posterous (Lovely feel and uploading but not the best for discussions) So far Jabbster looks the best for what we want right now. Any suggestions for alternatives would be welcome.

loving local food in a barn!

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:28:00 +0000

What started as a cost effective way to run Carousel@West Town Farm ended up as a celebration of local food and shared cooking. The Devon Carousel Project is exploring work with families and young children in Devon as a collaboration of artists and centres. The session at West Town Farm was a chance to make links and develop ideas with everyone involved. Thirty people needed feeding as part of this. Solution .. provide a large box of Shillingford vegetables and other yummy local food, an open fire and a crate of cooking stuff! Lots of shared choppings and mixings later and there was a feast. Salads and cumin summer stew, courgette pancakes and devon cheeses and more. Now the food was great but the creation of it better. Far better than the standard getting to know each other team challenges is when you are following your taste buds. I think this is going to be a way of working to explore.

Carousel @ West Town Farm from Workshops n' Docs on Vimeo.

Cooking food stories

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:07:00 +0000

We had a group of young people out at West Town last week. Not sure that they really wanted to be there at the start. A farm? Mud? Cover the trainers with plastic bags and make the best of it! But after a wander around with a few stories and interesting facts followed by a confrontation with a basket of vegetables, a box of cooking tools and an open fire the mood changed. Really good to hear suggestions on the best way to cook the sausages and see experimenting with olive oil dressed damper bread. There was a quietness around the fire and a stillness that made me want to tip toe! It is moments like that which remind me why I am doing all this stuff!

Storywalk for Ethiopian Active Citizens

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:24:00 +0000

I had the great pleasure of hosting a storywalk around West Town for a group from Ethiopia. Such warm hearted and lively people. It was a joy!

Visit Sarah's Facebook photo album Exeter & Ethiopia - Active Citizens Antics for more fantastic images!

Grafting Layers

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:19:00 +0000

Following on this thinking of layers comes these visual layers. Seasonal plants, identified and mapped across the farm and linked to their use and place within the life of the farm environment, History stories based on what has happened on the farm and the grafted stories from other places and times placed into the place that is West Town. I am playing with these layers with GIMP photo-editing software.

Grafting and Growing Stories on your Patch

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Sun, 29 May 2011 10:37:00 +0000

A lot of work I do is based out at West Town Farm. The stories I use and tell are collected and gathered from all over. Their themes and images link to the farm. How far does the story itself become from this farm? So the apple tree that Isabella slumbers under is this tree here in the orchard and the hill that Hugh climbs to find the silver cattle is that hill across the valley. The branches of the story become grafted onto the root stock of the land.

Now this takes on another strand when the body of stories is added to with the events of the farm. The tale of Steve meeting the badger thief stealing the straw, the story of Tom painting the cow murals, the grubbing up and re planting of orchards are all part of the oral history of the farm. Our patch is growing tales, linked to place linked to time, drawn from tradition and history. These can be told either around the fire or in the barn or even better along the tracks and pathways. Story walks!

brief pause whilst I tell some stories

This is getting interesting. A whole set of stories around the fire in the Henge at West Town. Some grafted and some farm history but all beginning to connect.

As I write and edit this I am reminded of Wright and Sites Mis-Guides where a guide "... is no ordinary guide book. It is guided by the practice of mytho-geography, which places the fictional, fanciful, fragile and personal on equal terms with 'factual', municipal history."

What has been happening?

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Fri, 20 May 2011 20:13:00 +0000

It has been an interesting Spring! Lots of farm based projects and explorations into local food. The farm, the field, the orchard are all places where exploration and learning can develop. The joy of looking up into a huge spring cabbage leaf and seeing all the veins outlined in the sun, the feel of clay and tadpoles between the toes and the secret noises of the woodland are all pointers in a way of working that is proving more and more fascinating. Alongside all this awe and discovery is the sheer logistics of keeping projects rolling along. My work seems to be a jigsaw full of pieces that seem to have a life of their own.

Children's View on Farms

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 17:59:00 +0000

I have been working with a city centre primary school on some extended farm based learning. I have just started visits with the new foundation children and spent the morning with them exploring vegetables, making parsnip crisps and discussing what a farm is before going off to visit The Barton in the afternoon.

Overwhelmingly the children felt that farms were places where animals were looked after in order to be safe such as "The farmer's wife is digging a hole for sheep to relax". Very few children make clear connections between animals and food or identifying vegetables as a farm feature. Of the 18 children 7 drew animals, farmers and simple features such as houses, fields and gates. The other 11 started to include more specific actions such as sheep dogs chasing sheep (not very much looking after them!) and cows eating hay. Only 2 children made reference to food one with a picture of pigs and a barbecue and the other with "This cow has udders. Milk comes out into the factory."

The farm visit including tasting salad from polytunnels, seeing eggs in the chicken coop and talking about milk and burgers as we watched the cattle in the barn. It will be interesting to see how the children's pictures and comments change as the year goes on. The group will have 5 visits over this time and will develop their ideas about farms as places where food comes from through a range of farm based activities and experiences.

Reflections @ Oddfellows

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:46:00 +0000

Well stories for grown ups in a pub!! Reflections poetry magazine have started a weekly gig in Exeter and my old friend Steve asked me to tell a story or two. It has taken a long time but I have stepped out of the farm (still had my wellie boot son though!) surrounded by families and children and into another world. So is it so very different? Spoken words in a shared space and the reaction of the listeners to guide you through so no not really. Got me thinking though about the stories that will work and the ways that they change. Start of a challenge to extend the stories more.

Halloween Tales in Newtown

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 23:15:00 +0000

Shadow puppets and tales of overcoming fear!

Sometimes entering chaos can lead to interesting tales. There were more people at this community event than expected. Straight into shadow puppet making and then tell a story with the puppets. The story? Well create it as we go along of course. Some great sound effects from the audience made all the difference. Thanks to Newtown Community Association for inviting me!

Community scale celebrations are vital to sustaining the quality and fabric of where and how we live. Faces become individuals, places become alive and it is fun! The interesting thing with the work I do is meeting people in different contexts. The family exploring the farm becomes the child in school becomes the shopper on the Love Local Food van and the world I live in becomes a little bit more threaded together.

Pony Powered Pumpkins ... interesting!

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 19:50:00 +0000

This is an interesting project. Pumpkins delivered by a pony! Exploring the role of pony power in our technological world. Bringing people and ponies together. Check back for more details!

First outing was along Burnthouse Lane, Exeter from 1.00 on Friday 29th November. This was a great adventure. So many people came out to say hello! Now I wonder would they have done that if we had been pushing a barrow of pumpkins or driving a white van? I think not. Obama the pony certainly helps breaks down barriers to communication. Our challenge is to see what is on the other side :)

Some more pictures here ... and some notes about the project below!

Winter Woods

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:36:00 +0000

This is a new project being developed for this winter. It will link explorations of woodland on the farm with tree planting, fire lighting and storytelling. Sessions might continue into dusk with shadow puppets. This post will be updated with more information as the session planning develops.

Check out some of the background notes in this mind map below.

Apple puppets

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 19:57:00 +0000

Apple people... Found objects ... Old apple names... Mincinglake valley ... Find out about a farm based session here

Sweet chestnuts

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:22:00 +0000

Squirrel's dinner stump

Woodcraft Camp

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 21:47:00 +0000

I had an interesting invitation to tell some stories at a Woodcraft Folk Camp up at Embercombe. The Camp was run by the 16-21 year old in very organised way with a cycle powered mobile phone charger, shower and outdoor cinema!! The atmosphere was very relaxed. A lot of my recent work has been with very young children so the chance to work with an older group was a bit of a challenge! Great audience though and lovely cycle ride home under a midnight full moon. The way in which language and delivery changes with the audience is intriguing. With this audience the story telling shifted through different modes moving from within the tale to commentary on the tale (and audience!) and back. Read more about stretching stories for different audiences here.

Orchard Stories

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:47:00 +0000

Pumpkin Soup

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:44:00 +0000

A new session at West Town Farm, Ide created wih organicARTS!

1000 Clay Cows

noreply@blogger.com (kevin@enthusiasticeducation.org) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:47:00 +0000

This is an exciting new project linking clay dug from the farm, cows, storytelling and sculpture. It is being carried out in partnership with organicARTS and West Town Farm.

We are looking to create a field of 1000 clay cows for Devon Open Studios in September. Any similarity to Gormley's Field for the British Isles is purely intentional!! Along with ceramic artist Lucy Rockliffe I am working on a mix of cow related storytelling from different cultures along with observation of real cows at the farm, digging up of clay from the meadow and creation of clay cow sculptures to take part in the Field of Cows.

This is connected to some earlier storytelling done last year. A clay session with Year Ones from Newtown Primary can be seen here.

These images come from a session with St David's Primary. I love the engagement between field, cows and calves, observant children and clay. This is true fieldwork!