Lesson(in)Action: Narratives Found off the Prescribed Page (Reading Between the Lines)

‘Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter [educator]* do good things’

Edgar Degas

‘Painting [education]* is stronger than I am. It can make me do whatever it wants’

Pablo Picasso

‘Painting [education]* has a life of its own’

Jackson Pollock

* My brackets

When working off the classroom map unseen plans materialise and we are more inclined to respond to them. Education is bigger than us and we must learn to allow it the space to create new narratives that we can follow. We must not try to control it or put it in a manageable box. If we do it becomes static and dry.

My colleague and I have just returned from a residential trip to Edinburgh with 21 students aged between 15 and 19. The thing about taking students on residential visits is that there is not a lesson-planning directive in sight. We rely on real life experience and adapt to circumstance. One of the planned activities on the itinerary was to work with watercolours on the beach at Portobello. This is an activity that we have carried out on numerous trips in the past from Northumbria to Barcelona, always with success and a variety of different outcomes. I suppose you could call it a ‘safe’ activity.

On a visit to the Fruitmarket Gallery to view the Tania Kovats exhibition ‘Oceans’ we saw her work with ink, salt and seawater; they were stunning. It gave us the idea to reproduce them at the beach. We had no ink with us so our first task was to purchase some, which we did. Our second task was to try and figure out how Kovats actually produced the drawings, as we did not know how (we did not discover the exact process but it didn’t stop us). Our third task was to switch the itinerary around to accommodate the activity and coincide it with a second sea related activity – photograms of the tide by torchlight.

This change in the plan, a detour from the agenda that we had constructed allowed us to directly engage the students with something they had just come across in the gallery. It suddenly became more alive to them as they realised they were going to have the chance to respond directly to the work they were looking at. So off we went, that evening, to the beach armed with ink, watercolour paper and salt flakes and we produced some beautiful work. Not only this but as we were experimenting and learning together the realisation grew that the activity we were carrying out related perfectly to the photograms that were to come later once the night fell was confirmation that the risk was worth taking.

Responding to what we see is a fundamental aspect of learning. The view or the gaze, particularly during an intense time period as experienced on a residential, is key to ensuring that the learning that takes place becomes deeper. Reacting to an event is something the artist is used to doing, they are always seeking new ways to construct the tangible.

I wrote earlier that education was bigger than us. This is a perfect example. Activities planned are adapted due to experiencing something new, this new activity then happens to bare close relation to the activity that followed and the relationship ensures that the whole learning experience is enhanced. It is down to the teacher to take the risk; Education as fluid, adaptable and alive.

The following day we visited the Louise Bourgeois at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. One of the highlights of the exhibition was a series of prints and fabric work that were produced in response to the river Bievre, ‘Ode A La Bievre’. The use of the horizon line bore an incredible resemblance to the line produced by Kovats. And upstairs in the same gallery? The Boyle Family’s ‘Sand, Wind and Tide’ series!

We are merely pawns who serve to deliver education that offers a sense of fluidity and life. This is The Unlesson Manifesto.

The images below visually tell the story of this blog.