Arts Inspirations: resources and ideas for early childhood visual arts
During this time of COVID-19 restrictions and physical distancing the importance of the arts in people’s lives has been highly evident. We have listened to music and watched movies. We have danced, sung and played music on balconies and in driveways.
Personally, I have done a free online course (thanks Este McLeod – see my time lapse play with her techniques below), completed weekly visual journal reflections, explored collaborative whiteboard drawing with early childhood arts colleagues from around the world during our weekly quarantine Zoom parties and set up a UNESCO international art week collaborative Coffee Splat and Drawing challenge with my colleagues – LINK here for an example.
Social media platforms are full of posts where friends and colleagues share the art making and crafting immersion that have not only filled in time as we have spent days, weeks and months in our homes; but have filled our hearts, hands and minds with occupations that are nurturing for our well-being. Museums, galleries, schools, teachers and countless organisations have posted resources and arts-centred experiences to do at home.
Visual arts at home:
The arts also support children to make sense of this time of pandemic – shut-down and physical distancing. I recently shared some thoughts about the importance of the arts (and particularly visual arts) for children and families with Leanne Gibbs from Early Start at UOW.
This is an encouragement for those of us who already believed that visual and graphic languages, mark-making and play with materials and processes should be central to human thriving and exercised a human birthright in both educational and social contexts.
Yearning for the arts
Each time I have researched the visual arts beliefs, knowledge and confidence of early childhood educators and engaged in professional training more broadly, the participants commonly express a deep yearning for art-making processes. This is often coupled with regret that throughout their own childhoods (and into adulthood), opportunities to learn to speak the languages of the visual arts and to play with visual arts materials were not adequately nurtured or exercised. Too many people reach adulthood announcing that they are not artistic or creative.
And yet, I believe this time of COVID-19 has fueled a wonderful re-newed realisation that the arts matter very very much in our lives. Time to make art is something we must reclaim. The yearning to make and to create and to express ourselves in visible and tangible ways is very real and we must feed it and express ourselves beyond the constrained, narrow and rushed parameters that had hijacked authentic lives and educational contexts before the pandemic.
And if the arts do matter in our lives (and they do whether we realise it or not), we must not deny ourselves or deny children opportunities to express their full humanity through the arts.
This blog was originally published by Dr Gai Lindsay on her professional blog. You can access the blog for more inspiration here
