"The purpose (the art education) that is chased is not that the pupils acquire a series of specific knowledge, but they manage to construct a structure of thought, a way of looking that it extends after the school period and qualifies the persons to understand and to appreciate the esthetic values of the art and of the world that surrounds them.
(...) to Propose like essential reference of the art education the knowledge of the contemporary art, provides a clear reference to design the educational practice, determining not only the support and the content of the education, but the way or ways of carrying out it." (Agra, MªJ. 2001)
The origin of this initiative comes from the long work that Enric Segarra has realized with his pupils of the Workshop of Art of the School of The Black poplars The Puig, Valencia.
This experimental Workshop is born of the proposal of the person who puts it into practice: Enric Segarra is a sculptor and painter and his pretension is that of making to come to the children of Infantile Education of the above mentioned School what means the sculpture.
To carry out this task the planning of the artist is completely novel:
- it does not depart from any reference book, is based on the use of the most varied sculptural materials and the elaborated activities come of the same experiences of the pupils (included his opinions about what they want to do).
- the schedule of the workshop is agreed by the Direction and the parents.
- of course the artist centers on a few targets and concrete contents that the same one recognizes like similar after the proposed ones from our part
His activities proposal until now current has centred on the SCULPTURAL CONSTRUCTION in which to worked aspects like:
- activities previous to color with waxes you have change of air, very varied textures and games on two-dimensional supports.
- constructions that favor the clinging, knotted, fitted, fixed, etc. with varied materials.
- collective constructions to natural size to work the spatial and existential organization: manipulated and identical big packing boxes.
- personages' construction and animals.
- abstract forms with varied materials looking for plastic aspects as the balance, color, movement. Sculptures, reliefs.
- the game of the mobiles.
PLASTIC RESULTS
The plastic results have been changed, but fundamentally:
- individual reliefs with diverse materials.
- collective reliefs.
- tubular sculptures with personal applications of every child.
- sculptures with boxes.
- mobiles.
From our point of view the results are unbeatable, being observed a freedom of execution slightly habitual and of expression in the schools. We present here a sample of images of the works prepared by the child / expert and believe that they you speak themselves.
In our opinion, the quality of the results comes from two important points:
- the person who proposes the workshop: he is a sculptor, his vision of the work is artistic not necessary based on the didactics curricular and she proposes activities to the children as if of artists they were talking each other, valuing the creativity and the initiative of the children with the minimal imposition to center the work topics, to provide the materials to them and to help them in the creation process when they demand it. Finally it is a question of an artist who like specialist in the topic claims that the children also enjoy his creations.
- the protagonists of the experience: the children. These contribute their own ideas, inform verbalizando what they want to do, play with the materials working with entire freedom and without adult prejudices and, especially, without the images esteriotipadas so habitual in the school centers. Also they take part actively in the works selection for the exhibitions (although the assembly, for clear reasons, the artist realizes them).
Departing from these experiences we have proposed to create a frame of reference that helps us to observe the needs of the children and the type of proposals we should do to them so that the target that we are interested in is reached: the comprehension of the sculptural volume.
I MARK OF REFERENCE:
THE OBSERVATION OF THE CHILD AND THE CONCEPTS THAT ARE PROPOSED TO THEM
Any type of exposition referred to the child has to depart necessary from the observation of its own needs.
If we observe the infantile experience we will realize that the children / experts in the earliest ages begin to distinguish the things that surround them because they touch them, they take them, feel them, take them to the mouth.... Being based fundamentally on the senses of the sight and the tact they begin his knowledge of the world. The verbal language will come then and with him the significance of his physical environment. And so, the manipulation of concrete and daily objects constitutes the base of the human knowledge because across these physical actions, knowledges are acquired and are internalized.
Of this observation also we deduce that in these ages they are interested in fundamentally two types of plastic processes in volume:
1. The fact of leaving trace of himself from the process of the modeling:
One of the most satisfactory experiences for the children and the girls is the forms creation from a mass - clay or similar - that allows them to shape and modify his initial volume. The direct contact with the ductile matter produces many internal reactions in the child: it allows him to unburden itself emotionally, motive tint propitiates the development of his coordination, it relates it to his way, but, especially, it allows him to express itself freely. The use of the clay, for example, favors the spontaneous work since his malleable characteristics cheer the child to do up and undo without feeling limited by a definitive matter.
By means of the practice of the modeling the children and the girls discover that they can prepare forms and it is the whole achievement for them to manage to raise them of the plane, to keep them vertical and to make them recognizable for others. These forms, like autonomous units, also allow him to recognize the space occupied by the volume like a form of full space in which every thing has his place.
Shaping, thinking about what it wants to shape, experimenting with the forms, acquiring information about what they touch and what they see, the children and the girls discover that his shaped volumes can be compact and occupy a place but also they can be pierced, be perforated, empty.
2. The playful possibility that provides the construction process to them:
The spontaneous game with the materials is natural in the human being. For the children it is natural to relate the forms to the real space, for it the spatial organization in the third dimension supposes an affirmation of his real perception of the world. In the construction, the child establishes direct relations between and the objects, satisfies his curiosity, plays with the materials, exercises his will displacing and arranging the pieces in accordance with his imagination and his fantasy. This way, in the same way that he raises to a furniture, this way places a box on other one, and is identified by this object raising it, lives for projection through its own sensations of climbing, of rising, of going down, of the defeated danger, of the dizziness and of the domain.
By means of the balance he constructs, raises, organizes, opens in extension on a surface the elements of the construction: buckets, boxes, materials of waste. By means of the hollow or the resultant interstices he can observe what exists if the same, annotating next spaces or to interpret circumstances referred to other more remote spaces. But the game is always the agglutinating agent of these actions, just as it plays with his friends, it does it with the objects with which he constructs. In early ages, the child experiments without an expressive premeditation because only it is playing, it even is very current that, while he constructs, speaks with the objects, expresses sounds onomatopéyicos, mixes toys and constructions.
The adquisión of some plastic concepts.
For very elementary that is the three-dimensional expression we will always see the volume accompanied by the space, by the form, by the matter and by the texture (we even might add the color and the movement). These constants help to define it plastically and that also correspond in importance to the processes in the infantile development. But we have to bear much in mind how the children tackle these aspects.
Two aspects that better define the tridimensionalidad: the form and his space have a relative importance for the child / expert children / experts. Likewise in his scrawls and graphic pre-schemes what they are interested in is the visual and motive game on the surface of the role, and, therefore, they do not grant any value the drawn form and the space in which they place it; when they are interested it forms in volume and the space that she does not generate either worries them if the shaped - for example - really is a volume.
Therefore, for them the essential thing the form but the matter is not and so much if it is a question of clay, of plasticine, or of any other pasta to shape, during the first contacts the children will enjoy the matter stretching, smoothing, sinking, beating.... that is to say, discovering and playing with his possibilities and limitations.
For it in the interest that moves the child to be shaped, the first place occupies the matter: his exploration, the action to transform it. And this strong motivation is the one of that we must make use to provide materials to them with different textures that allow simultaneously a progressive enrichment of the sensibility of the tact.
Since it refers to the space (obviously, we cannot speak about the volume without recounting it to a space) in the infantile stage, when the children / experts work with the volume we observe the appearance of an intrinsic quality that is evident, almost, like the only expressive element: his cosidad, his appearance of compact block - compact space.
Although this volumetric body in appearance should be formed by the addition of other elements we cannot consider them like creators of space. The space does not intervene in the creation of the work; it is there but it does not have plastic significance sufficient: It has, of course, an important meaning when the child / girl uses it as a place of displacement, distance between the parts, base on which it rests or constructs the object. And so, the space is a useful, significant way in his playful, perceptive and cognitive purpose, although he does not keep relation with the concept of the adult.
But let's not forget that the experimentation with objects and forms leads straight the children and the girls to establish subjective relations with the space. Of course, his spatial conception is limited, but they are qualified to recognize certain connections between the forms and the place that they occupy. This way, likewise they play with daily objects - furniture, boxes - they project in these actions their own feelings and sensations and consolidate, little by little, his comprehension of the space.
This spatial conception takes place of a way secuencializada, like many psychologists and pedagogues - Piaget, Stern, Duquet, Kellogg, Lowenfeld, Oñativia, Holloway - have informed us in diverse investigations, and although the denominations change from a few authors to others - stadiums, levels or stages - all his proposals coincide that there exist basically three stadiums of spatial assimilation in which they always remain linked the experience of the proper body with the existential environment.
The first significant spatial relation: the level topológico (according to Piaget) that defines the first relations of the child with what it surrounds him in a next way and that stage of Infantile Education usually appears in the last cycle (4-6 years). Between the first and second cycle of Primary (6-8 years and 8-10 years, respectively), the consolidation of the spatial relations - levels topológico and proyectivo according to Piaget - it differs in the backing between the forms prepared in the surface of work - the plane - and the forms obtained in vertical.
The assimilation of the actions space - storm they are translated in volumetric achievements that express movement. Finally, the pupils experience by means of diverse three-dimensional skills - basically shaped and construction - his comprehension of certain spatial relations: differentiation between the vertical position and the horizontalidad, the formal balance, the compensation of elements, the dimensions, the sizes, the textures... It is the stage of spatial control of the elements and the materials.
Didactic aspects to bear in mind:
Departing from what we know of the children, and bearing in mind that we cannot cut ourselves off of his daily reality, that is to say the school ambience, we need to check some plannings to recognize and to improve the concepts that they usually work.
First of all, it is necessary to determine what Targets we should bear in mind in any didactic methodology. We think that the targets must enunciate the last purpose of the Contents and Activities that are programmed for two cycles of Infantile Education. It is not a question of raising a targets list as useful recipe for the professionals, but of determining three general Targets based on the processes that intervene in all plastic activity, so that the result is the interrelation of these three factors: the perception, the coordination tint - manual, the expression
Secondly we need to clarify the learning Contents that like educators we want to work with the children. There will be the support of the infantile integral formation and they will have to affect in all the capacities. Poe it in the most current proposals curriculares they affect in three types of contents that, somehow, gather the strategies so that the children and the girls reach his full formation: the Conceptual Contents, the Procedural ones and the Actitudinales.
In the third place we present a few Specific Contents like regarding for two basic procedures: Modeling and Construction. In this case, desmarcándonos of the proposal curricular previous, we contribute some essential and specific contents that without being employed at the school context we should know.
In last place, to raise a minim Secuencialización of Activities of ámbos procedures for, from her, to prepare work proposals adapting them to the children and the places of work |
