inisis - the fieldthefieldcentre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/inisis...process the same...

inIsisThe Field Centre Research Journal Volume 1, No. 1 - 2014ISSN 2055-5156 (Online)

inIsis - The Field Centre Research Journal Vol.1 No.1 2014inIsis - The Field Centre Research Journal Vol.1 No.1 2014

2

inIsis - The Field Centre Research Journal Vol.1 No.1 2014Editor: Aksel Hugo: [email protected]: www.thefieldcentre.org.ukDesign: Will Mercer at Ruskin Mill Trust: www.rmt.orgFront Cover: View from the Field Centre over Horsley Valley taken by Lucinda Powers on 20/12/13

Welcome

The word ’gathering’ has two meanings in English; (1) as a noun it means ’a coming-together’, (2) as a verb ’bringing-together’. In Egyptian mythology, ISIS is the re-gatherer, the female god who searches and finds the scattered bodily parts of her husband and brother OSIRIS; she rebuilds it and reunites herself with the ressurected body. The naming of the Field Centre Journal is sourced here in Isis. We welcome their coming into being in this journal.

We also welcome our authors. In this first issue, there are scattered voices coming from different fields: an artist and sculptor (Jo Naden), a physisist and science educator (Troy Vine), a botanist and Goethean science expert (Craig Holdrege), an art tutor and textile researcher (Sue Reed) and finally an MSc student and craft tutor (Matt Briggs). What they have in common is their search into a scattered field of knowing and the attempt to rebuild something coherent. This rebuilding is by no means final. On the contrary, in all articles you will find they lead to research-based suggestions of new beginnings. If as a reader, you take the perspective of the author’s voice to understand their research position, you will discover that they in the end do exactly what Isis did in her final step. They unite themselves as she did, with what they have resurrected. Reuniting with the result of their conscious quest, they end where research begins, in consciously framed embodied questions. After each article, there is a short text connecting these seed points to new beginnings of projects and events at the Field Centre.

And last but not least, a very warm welcome to all our new readers!

Aksel Hugo Editor

3

Wall painting of Isis depicted with outstretched wings c 1360 BCE

ContentsCatching fishness 4

Goethe: An eye for colour 7When plants become our teachers 10

Thinking textiles as a community of practice 12Benefits of craft for impulse control-related disorders 15

Beholding a question: Re-imagining thinking 17

Introduction

The inauguration of the Field Centre took place on Michaelmas day, 29th of September 2013. The opening is a culmination of 28 years of work within Ruskin Mill Trust, serving the needs of young adults with developmental challenges. During this time, countless workshops and public lectures took place for staff and the community with international practitioners and researchers. This work is now housed and given its identity in the Field Centre which also provides the venue and research context for the MSc in Practical Skills Therapeutic Education. The MSc is delivered in collaboration with Crossfields Institute and validated by the University of the West of England (UWE). I would like to take this occasion in welcoming Dr. Aksel Hugo, pioneer research educator within Steiner Education and Associate Professor in Science Education, who is leading the Field Centre research. In addition, Aksel coordinates the Journal inIsis, which is a foundation for communication of the events, activities and projects undertaken within the Field Centre. The Journal is also available online at www.thefieldcentre.org.uk and I hope you enjoy reading it. You are also welcome to enter into dialogue with Aksel (contact details below) regarding content of this journal and events at the Field Centre.

I wish you a warm invitation into this new initiative and Journal.

Aonghus Gordon, Founder and Chair of Ruskin Mill Trust

Catching fishness Aksel: “This sculpture really caught my interest … so what did you do?”

Jo: “It is some years ago now. I had begun some experiments with water in the studio - I wanted to try to understand how water and form relate in a more direct way. I tried out various ways of agitating water – however as I was limited by the space within the studio, it became apparent that it might be more useful to continue the experiments outside. I went to a stream quietly tucked away where there was a combination of slow shallows in close proximity to channels of lively movement. On the bank I melted wax in a pan over a fire. I poured wax into the shallows and became intrigued when the wax-pouring resulted in forms that resembled crayfish. I decided to try pouring midstream, anticipating that the wax would quickly rush away with the water; I bridged the flow with a tennis net to catch escaping wax. There was a particularly interesting cascade over a rock where the water gushed downwards, folding into itself – I poured the wax in at this point.

Aksel: “So how did it feel … to see that thing coming out?”

Jo: “... It was a bit of a eureka moment. I was astonished to see eyes, gills, it was definitely a fish! In fact I said out loud, I’ve caught a fish! I was presented with questions to which there are no simple answers. Where do the forces live that shape the fish? Do they come from the activity of the fish or from the movement of the water? Does the water have a memory of this within it? It made the hairs on my head stand on end; a glimpse into a deeper level of seeing.

Aksel: What a wonderful story! I can see how it came into being now, the sculpture …

Jo: Coming from Buxton, a place where the wells are still blessed annually, probably accounts for my initial interest in water. Water manifests evidence of its his-tory in rocks, plants and animals, in the sands of the sea where they shore with the land and on a different scale in the mountains and valleys. In the air we see the same phenomena of form expressed in birds and clouds. We are in effect living in another reflected expression of the sea. Within this cycle of earth’s life, water’s formative expressions appear very different as they measure the

We know from the study of biology how certain insects and flowers are matched, and the two exist only as long as they coexist. What is often less acknowledged is how this reciprocity prevails at a much deeper level between lawfulness in life and environment (Gibson 1986). On one hand we can study physical movements of fish, how they exert force to the surrounding water and how their undulating expansion and contraction generates waves of flexion that travel the length of the body. On the other, we can study the lawfulness of how water moves (waves, vortexes etc.).

It takes another mindset though, and an artistic one, to explore how these two perspectives entwine, weave and play into each other. To understand the dynamics of a particular fish-form, in terms of how it “makes sense” means we need to understand it inside the lawfulness of moving water. So, as the fish moves, the dynamics and lawfulness of ‘fish-movement’ and ‘water movement’ merge.

When I saw the sculpture of Jo Naden (it appeared as the first piece of art inside the Field Centre) and later heard the story of how it was created, I became curious. Who was this artist that created such a sculpture? And how did it come about? Aksel

experience of time. These considerations underpin the work I make, drawing together form, culture and ritual within the measurings of time.

Aksel: “Thank you for sharing these very interesting insights.”

Reflections: Schauberger’s dynamicsAccording to Victor Schauberger, a body of water in its watercourse attempts to mirror the three types of motion we find in the planets: First the water rotates about its own axis: CYCLOID motion, like the planet’s spinning on its axis to give us day and night. Then, the water SPIRALS along as it flows in its bed, as planet Earth spirals around the Sun in the course of the year. And finally, the entire watercourse twists and turns in a SPACE-CURVE, mirroring the entire solar system as it follows its path through the galaxy (Cobbald, 2006). In the drawings Schauberger’s made of these forcefields, it is possible to get an intuitive grasp of how he perceived the moving field centre.

Translating these insights into technology, the logging-flumes Schauberger built were designed to encourage the water to flow in this way, and so were able to transport logs that were heavier than water. According to Cobbald (2006), “the lay-out was designed to stimulate this cycloid-spiral space-curve motion”. As in a tornado, where the mass of falling air and water causes the formation of a central vortex that acts like a giant vacuum cleaner, the levitational force concentrates towards the core vortex at the centre of the spiral.

In Schauberger’s perspective, nature takes advantage of this; birds and fish, whose bodies are designed to process the same levitational energies, are actually drawn through their medium as they move. In his own words, this means:

‘A bird does not fly – it is flown. A fish does not swim – it is swum.’

This reversed or embedded perspective is then key to understand the amazing ability trout or salmon have to move upstream:

‘Because water…moves in a cyclo-spiral space curve, it contains levity in its movement. This process might explain how a trout can leap up a waterfall, as the fish moves into the uplifting centre of the spiral of the descending water.’

Jo Naden, artist, interviewed by Aksel Hugo


4 5

Jo Naden’s sculpture which now resides in the Field Centre

November 2013

An embedded Schaubergerian perspective on the ‘logic of a fish-form’ says it must be understood in its interaction with lawfulness of moving water. If we now go with the warm, fluid beeswax as it pours into the dynamics of water, we must enter and become the moving centre of this merged force field. And yes, we may indeed feel surprised, but also a bit reassured by Jo Naden’s catch of fishness.

Despite his Theory of Colours being penned over two hundred years ago, Goethe’s ideas and research on colour can still serve as a source of inspiration and new ideas. Wittgenstein (1991), for example, when he knew he only had a few months left to live, turned to Goethe’s Theory of Colours as a source of inspiration for his own Remarks on Colour. Among these remarks are a number of puzzle questions Wittgenstein left for a future theory of colour to explain, such as whether there could be a reddish green or a bluish yellow. It certainly seems to our ordinary experience of colour that reddish green or bluish yellow are shades of colour that do not appear in the same way that bluish green or reddish yellow, i.e. orange, do. Or another question is why is white the lightest colour? Or why is there not a blackish yellow? It is these kinds of questions Wittgenstein thinks a theory of colour should be able to explain, namely the lawfulness or structure of colour appearance.

Goethe: An eye for colourBy Dr. Troy Vine

Bibliography

Cobbald. J. (2006) Victor Schauberger: a life of learning from nature. Floris Publishers

Gibson, J.J. (1986) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey

inIsis - The Field Centre Research Journal Vol.1 No.1 2014 inIsis - The Field Centre Research Journal Vol.1 No.1 2014

The Brantwood Meadow Project www.thefieldcentre.org.uk

Connected to the gardens that John Ruskin (1819-1900) developed at Brantwood, near Conniston, Sally Beamish has conducted a 7 year field trial meadow project looking at the long term effects of biodynamic preparations on soil and plant life. Methods that are used are chemical analysis of soil samples, chromotograpy and Goethean observations. It was presented at the Biodynamic Asso-ciation at AGM last in October 2013. Shortly thereafter a first collaboration with the Field Centre was initiated, focusing on methodological challenges in the final stage of the project. Results will be evaluated and written up in a final report by spring 2015. Ruskin Mill Trust has for many years collaborated with Brantwood, and also supported the research work. Brantwood has about 25 000 visitors every year and is a living museum of John Ruskin’s life and ideas.

6 7

Drawing by Schauberger – cycloid-spiral space curve motion - from Cobbald. J. (2006) Victor Schauberger p. 66.

This phenomenal structure of colour was first systematically examined by Goethe, and, like Wittgenstein, it was precisely this phenomenal structure of colour that he attempted to explain. Wittgenstein begins his Remarks on Colour by asking the reader to consider the relationship between the lightness of different shades of colour. While this sentence has the same form as comparing the length of two sticks, with the sticks it is what he calls an external relation, whereas for colours it is an internal relation. This distinction gets straight to the heart of the disagreement between Goethe and Newton: Newton was happy when he had found an external relation to distinguish different colours. Newton’s theory equates the different colours of the rainbow to the ‘diverse refrangability’ of the light. In modern language we would say the different colours of the rainbow are due to the different wavelengths of the light that reaches our eye. While this is certainly very useful for physics, it cannot help the philosopher understand the internal relations between colours. From the perspective of wavelength, a bluish yellow simply is green, in the sense that a blue light and a yellow light shone on the same patch of white surface will appear green. But this is not what Wittgenstein means. We do not see green as a bluish yellow in the same way as we see orange as a yellowish red, or reddish yellow. We can imagine a series of colours blending continuously from yellow at one end to red at the other with orange in the middle. This we cannot do from yellow to blue with yellowish blue in the middle. We see green in the middle, which looks different from yellow and different from blue. We could explain orange to a blind person as a yellowish red, but not green as a bluish yellow. We can only say that the mixture of yellow and blue gives yellow.

To state the problem between explaining colours in terms of external relations, i.e. wavelength, more starkly, we can ask the question why is red next to yellow in the rainbow? A theory of colour based on wavelength cannot, even in principle, answer this question. It is simply a factum brutum. But this is exactly the kind of question Goethe and Wittgenstein wanted to find an answer to. The problem facing Newton was that he developed what became known as the representational theory of perception. The objects of the universe have certain qualities, such as size, form and motion, which John Locke later called primary qualities. But qualities such as tastes and colours, on the other hand, were deemed not to exist among the objects of the world, but only in the mind of the perceiver. Thus a ray of light does not have the colour red, for example, but, only by virtue of having a certain wavelength is able to call forth the sensation of red in the mind of observer.

Goethe showed that the different colours of the rainbow are related to each other in very specific ways. Thus it would not be possible to switch two colours, yellow and red say, without breaking the internal symmetry of colour appearance. In the representationalist view, however, the colours are sensations in the mind, and are simple in the sense that the sensation of red is unrelated to the sensation of green. Thus a theory that reduces colour to wavelength cannot explain this structure.

What was Goethe’s fundamental insight that makes him still seem fresh and relevant today? I think a part of his appeal is that he didn’t subscribe to a representationalist theory of perception, and thus didn’t split the world into objective primary qualities out there in the world and subjective secondary qualities ‘just in the head’. This is very much in line with the new philosophical movement that is greatly influenced by J. J. Gibson (2002) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1958), which has developed ‘ecological’ theories of perception describing the perception of an active, embodied perceiver in a lived environment. Goethe too was interested in colours as they appear to us in the world around us, in all their manifold situations and possibilities and can be seen as a forerunner to this philosophical movement. He was interested not in finding the causes of colours in an invisible world of theoretical entities, but in the conditions for their appearances in the lived world around us.

Merleau-Ponty, M. 1958. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Gibson, J. 2002. A Theory of Direct Visual Perception, In: Vision and Mind, Edited by Noë, A. & Thompson, E. 2002, The MIT Press.

Wittgenstein, L. 1991 Remarks on Colour. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 1977.

Colour and Sound Symposium www.thefieldcentre.org.uk

In the Symposium ‘Eye for Colour, Ear for Sound’ colour scientists and science educators will meet with artists and art educators to continue Wittgenstein’s way of asking, within a workshop setting.

The aim will be to explore structural qualities of colour and sound as they appear within visual and auditory experience. It will involve teacher educators and teachers from England, Germany and Norway in a first exploratory symposium at the Field Centre in Autumn 2014.

The Symposium marks the starting of a project (2014-16) to develop an understanding of colour and sound phenomena relevant both to science teachers (in optics and acoustics) and art teachers (within visual arts and music). It is planned in collaboration between the Field Centre, Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Bergische Universität Wuppertal.


8 9

When plants become our teachersby Dr. Craig Holdrege, based on a lecture delivered at the Field Centre, September 2013

The plant lives in intimate connection with its environment and is also sustained by this intimate relation. When we notice, carefully observe, and actively follow the way plants live, they become part of us. We learn not only about them but from them. In this sense plants become our teachers. We meet life in the plant and this life can light up in us and increasingly inform the way we interact with the world. When this activity is awakened as a conscious activity we can cultivate, the dialogue with our new silent teacher begins.

Rooted through the sensesConnecting to their environment, plants have roots and human beings have senses. We become rooted in the world through what we perceive. The sensory roots develop by careful, open-minded exploration and experience of the sensory world. We turn towards the concrete appearances and happenings of the world. We remain open to and orient ourselves around – stay in touch with – the phenomena with which we are interacting. Active and ever-renewed immersion in sense experience nourishes our inner growth, keeps us vibrant and fresh. When a seed germinates, its growth is centred in a position between two polar opposites. One part is seeking into the depths guided by gravity and the other part is seeking light. This in-between space resembles mind’s site of making sense, the space between sensing and thinking. Where receptive and creative mind meet we find the growth point of knowing.

A teacher of transformationWhen we attend to plants out of this orientation of mind, they reveal to us life-as-transformation. Our thinking comes into movement, and we learn to form and re-form our ideas. The plant is a rhythmical being. It forms leaf after leaf, and it alternates between expansion and contraction in its development. When

we carefully observe phenomena we expand out into them, we live with them, and let them become part of us. Then we draw back and work with what we have taken in. This prepares us to go out to the phenomena again.

In these ways we come into inner movement that intensifies our receptivity to new aspects of the phenomena when we return to observation. As we learn through the ongoing rhythmical inquiry into things, the plant of understanding grows. For a long time we may be spreading our roots, growing leaf after leaf, and also shedding leaves in getting to know an area of life. When the plant forms flowers, it enters a new phase of its development. In the flower, leaf-like parts (sepal, petal, stamen, pistil) appear highly transformed as a new patterned whole. In the process


Field Centre Landscaping Project

Led by Michael Atherton, a landscaping project has just started, aiming at a reciprocal conscious dialogue between what takes place inside and outside the Field Centre building. For this to grow, many elements need careful consideration of placing and shaping such as a welcoming entry space, footpaths for reflective walks, wood plantings that reduce traffic noise, meadows, a garden for sensing the seasons through plants and a conversation space. Nathaniel Hughes from the Ruskin Apothecary is also helping in the project with his broad and deep knowledge of plants. The development of the future use of the Field Centre building will have a strong focus on how these two spaces, the inside and the outside, practically and consciously can be connected. As a volunteer, Artur Tougu from Germany is connected to the landscaping project during this spring.

10 11

of knowing, moments of insight can come – ”aha!” experiences – in which the different aspects of what we have been studying appear in a new unity. These moments of insights are the flowers of understanding. Their beauty can enthrall us, but they can do more. When we say that moments of insight and understanding bear fruit, we are pointing to their generative nature, to the seeds of new life they bear. They are a source of inspiration and give direction to new pathways of inquiry and action.

A teacher of contextA plant does not simply unfold its forms; it forms itself through its environment. And it brings this context to expression in its own form and substance. The plant can adapt to myriad conditions, in each instance bringing forth different aspects of its own plastic nature as well as expressing the unique circumstances of its environment. Likewise, living thinking is in intimate conversation with the phenomenal world. It is truly context sensitive – open to what the phenomena have to say. Inasmuch as we enter into such engagement, we realize that life places real demands on our ability to fathom dynamic processes and relations. In other words, a plant we attend to is easily saying to us: if you want to participate in and become aware of the way I live in the world, you are going to have to change. We find ourselves on a pathway to develop organs of perception in ourselves so that we can do justice to the world in our perceiving, thinking, and acting.

A crucial part of this transformational work is to cultivate awareness for the mental activity that informs all our interactions with the world. We cannot be truly alive in thought if we are aware only of thought products (concepts, models, etc.). Just as we begin to see the plant as a dynamic process, we can learn to see our mental life as an unfolding, highly contextual activity.

Drawings by Craig Holdrege from his book: Thinking Like a Plant:

A Living Science for Life ISBN 978-1-58420-143-4

Collaborative action researchIn summer 2013 I was asked by Aonghus Gordon to research and co-ordinate the potential for developing a community of practice focused on Ruskin Mill, its relation to the Horsley Valley, the wider community and the Field Centre. This involved facilitating meetings with practitioners, craftspeople and administrators, and also to maintain communication along the Horsley Valley to the emerging work at the Field Centre. Two important questions came from our initial meeting in November 2012:

• It was recognized that art and crafts have a very deep and rich cultural, social and historic significance. How can this be shared with our students, staff and wider community?

• It was also recognized that education must not be isolated from enterprise or social practice. How may we find common ground and understanding, plan for a changing future creatively and proactively?

This led to the question of how and where to start: Is it possible to use Cotswold Fleece as an exemplar of a community of practice, as a case to show how connections between enterprise, craft, education and the wider local community can be developed in a contemporary setting? Framed as a collaborative action research project, it could become a pilot study of strategies, principles and methods for other areas and crafts to learn from, and build on the experience and the momentum of the work of the community textile team.

Pilot study: the community textile teamThe team is facilitated by Margaret Docherty and based at Ruskin Mill. From October 2012 it piloted the ‘Golden Fleece Events’ over a three-year period. The first year included the Cotswold Sheep Rare Breed Society, a Ruskin Mill College community weaving, felt banners made by a senior resident of the Arkell Community Centre and Nailsworth Primary School, weavers from Stroud and Wotten under Edge.

Two Ruskin Mill College tutors, Marianne van der Tas and Ian Blythe, gave a demonstration of carding, spinning and weaving to the public and students. The youngest participant was 5 years old and the oldest was a 90 year-old spinner from Nailsworth. Craft skills were evident through the wonderful examples of knitting, weaving and spinning. We were given the fleece and the practitioners did not charge for their time. Some crafts were sold. There was no advertising. Communication happened by word

This report outlines an aspect of my research, and how it relates to Ruskin Mill Trust and the Field Centre. It points to an emergent research and development strategy; ’Thinking Textiles as a community of practice’. As action research in social pedagogy it is sourced in a biography of social practice and social pedagogy out of 30 years experience of working in the community through Nailsworth Festival, Nailsworth Town Council, independent community groups and out of my role at Ruskin Mill Trust as ‘Coordinator for Social Pedagogy.’

The context: weaving threads of a community of practiceThe initial impulse of Ruskin Mill Trust was built on the social enterprise of craftspeople who worked with students in a combination of voluntarism, self employment and education. In the early 1980s, Ruskin Mill was closely connected to local community action such as Nailsworth Festival, the Civic Society, planning and social politics. Vice versa, the public walked into the craft workshops and met students. Indeed this social communication was important; it enabled the students to integrate.

Margaret Docherty was one of the early pioneers and my work with her developed the ‘Textile Community Group’ (2011) and the Golden Fleece Event which was located in Ruskin Mill Gallery 2012 and 2013. These events have rekindled the early impulse of social enterprise, craft and education as a model for co-creating a community of practice through shared collaboration. The question is; how may we re-connect with this early impulse and develop education in touch with social enterprise and community?

Thinking textiles: community out of embodied practice

by Sue Reed, MA, Art and Craft Mentor, Ruskin Mill Trust


12 13

Golden Cotswold Fleece


of mouth and through several events leading up to the month of October. These included community fires and storytelling at Washpool and Nortonwood. The most important initiative was the invitation to groups outside the Horsley Valley. This stepping out and into the process is an important social element, and weaves the social fabric of the local and wider community through common interest.

The second year ‘Golden Fleece Event’ was structured from experiences of the previous year, also influenced by our contact with Norway. We invited people to contribute to a theme of ‘storytelling and knitting.’ The participants came from Ruskin Mill College students, Practical Skills Therapeutic Education learners, local people, Frampton on Severn and Cam primary schools and our Norwegian visitors.

During the October event my knitting, a red dress, was taken to an exhibition curated by Carole Baugh at the Butcher Works, Freeman College, Sheffield. This latter initiative was important because it inspired the theme for October 2014. The third year is emerging though conversation and will have a theme about ‘creative journeys - a sense of place’. This will be a Ruskin Mill Trust collaboration with their colleges and will include the wider community. An emergent methodological framework: 3 x 4The pilot study indicates the emergence of a methodological structure for working with social enterprise and community, with three steps connected to a 3-year cycle:

Year 1, from October 2012, was a spontaneous process. The only question was “let’s see what happens if we invite people to contribute to an event celebrating the Cotswold sheep”. The gesture is to invite, to connect and

a development of “ownership in the emergent”.

Year 2 from October 2013 we introduced a common theme which emerged out of the previous year. In this case the theme was ‘creative journeys, storytelling and knitting’.

Year 3 from October 2014 we are inviting students, staff and the wider community across and outside the organisation to contribute to a shared theme (local, regional, international).

For those facilitating the process, each of the three years seems to require four distinct steps in the process for community consciousness to develop through practice:

1. Preparation and entrance: discuss ideas with contributors, always encourage and say yes to ideas, be flexible.

2. Establishing ideas, boundaries and edges: themes, materials, inviting inside and outside participants, welcome spontaneity.

3. Transition and transformation: observe social interactions and how it may be possible to generate and encourage enterprise.

4. Closure, reflection and exit: allow time for feedback and ideas for the future. This facilities a feeling of belonging to a common process.

Thinking textiles as a community of practiceFor the process to become established and deepened, the three year cycle will need to be repeated with different teams of people who will create succession, broaden participation and transfer their skills. There needs to be a key person and team to hold the process over the four steps. If the process is not held, the community initiative will be fleeting and temporary.

Collaborative Action ResearchBased on these events and conversations and the methodological emerging framework, a collaboration with the Field Centre is focusing on collaborative action research and development strategies for “Thinking textiles as a community of practice”. The first step in shaping this research strategy was at a Field Centre event in April 2014. This Golden Fleece Event pilot project is part of a wider context of a PhD project connected to the University of Derby, again with a focus on ‘Social Pedagogy out of Embodied Practice’. The project aims at forming a template for similar practice based collaborative action research, linking research and education at MSc and PhD level to action research on development of our practices.

Within my practitioner role, I work with a range of Special Education Needs (SEN) students in a traditional cutlery and metal workshop environment in the heart of Sheffield’s industrial quarter, teaching young people traditional metal and wood craft skills. In this context, the question of my work and research has been how the use of crafts can be understood and improved as an effective method of developing impulse control through the development of executive functions.

There are a number of studies that have researched the benefits of crafts. Studies such as Sigman (2008) have looked specifically into Ruskin Mill Trust’s craft-based curriculum and has given some significant, useful and valid conclusions. Critically however, it can be noted that it draws its data from relevant studies only and lacks a more situated, holistic approach. What I was interested to achieve within my MSc research was the potential to provide innovative phenomenological research from the perspective of the practitioners embedded within the environments themselves. This article gives a summary of my findings.

In order to gain a holistic view of the mechanisms of crafts and their corresponding materials’ effect on the learner, the study was twofold. The first part researched the development of executive function capacities, as these give rise to the ability to temper one’s impulses and therefore can be seen as the internal or human process. Secondly, we need to understand how the material influence or affordance on the learner through their interactions with it. This can be understood as the external or outer conditions in which a learner can gain additional therapeutic and educational benefits, which arise from the unique processes, biographies and interactions they can offer. The assumption is that both play a vital role within the education and therapeutic value of the Trust’s Practical Skills Therapeutic Education curriculum. By better understanding such processes, this study may provide a basis for further research and development within the curriculum.

As a craft practitioner studying Practical Skills Therapeutic Education (PSTE) I felt it important to engage in a craft process as part of my personal

reflection process. I liked the idea of exploring craft as self-expression in a pedagogical model’ (Pollannen et al, 2011, p. 115) and “making as a tool for reflection” (Niedderer et al, 2011). This concept was discussed and explained within the literature review. I also put forward a similar craft reflection method, which is explained within the beginning of the thematic review section. Therefore I decided to challenge my skills as a practitioner by combining all three materials, crafts and processes (investigated in the project) to make a unique, purposeful piece of craftwork (a wood and bone handled knife with sheath), to help me reflect on the overall process.

My most striking insight from this reflection was how deeply I was able to feel and understand the sense of ‘accomplishment’ while gaining insight into the lawfulness and holistic processes and links that arose from the experience, which the interviewees highlighted within the student examples discussed during the interviews and literature review. This also gave me insight into the process of tempering

‘Benefits of craft’ for impulse control related disorders

By Matt Briggs, MSc Student, Tutor Freeman College

14 15

Spoon Forging at Freeman College

inIsis - The Field Centre Research Journal Vol.1 No.1 2014

and controlling my impulses in order to focus, reflect and improve on the piece (as well as academically though my MSc) and as a result the desire to finish and complete the project and MSc enhanced both my personal and professional life. This lends testament to the effectiveness of such a reflection and craft method - fighting with the boundaries of the materials.

I want to give an example of how my day to day interaction with the students has been adapted. I am now routinely encouraging situations for the students to reflect upon their behaviour and work. I facilitate this by directing them towards more tailored interactions with materials, according to their level of impulsivity and difficulties; which has been shown to promote the development of executive functioning capacities. I intend to further such improvement within my professional practice and workshop in the future and am looking forward to discover where it can lead to for the students.

The outcome of my study was the development of a reference guide that provides guidance to help decide which craft and material would best suit the individual needs of the learners by refining the ‘prescription process’ according to type of craft and material affordance. This tool builds upon and refines the PSTE method and approach to a learner’s journey and will help towards directing learners to the ripest therapeutic and educational conditions from which they can benefit. My confidence in the practicality of this reference guide was encouraged following a professional discussion I had with an anthroposophical trained doctor and psychiatrist.

The findings of the study have been extremely useful within my professional role and practice of being a craft tutor. I have been working with students who

have particular diagnosis and behavioural statements which directly link to poor impulse control and this has manifested in some very challenging situations within my sessions. Through actively reading and researching impulse control disorders I am now able to better understand the behaviours of such students. It consequently enables me to respond appropriately to them. Guided by my new insight I thus believe I have started to embark on a meaningful and intentional path to help my students both therapeutically and educationally. I have fulfilled my original intention.

This whole process of deep investigation with the subject areas of impulse control, crafts and material affordance also immensely supported my standpoint as PSTE faculty. As part of the process I was able to share a presentation on ‘PSTE and impulse control’ in order to help other staff better understand this issue. I was also able to instruct and give ideas on how to manage and improve conditions within their practice to better cater for learners’ needs within Freeman College. I believe that research carried out for the practitioners by the practitioners is empowering. It champions the excellent work that is being done by disseminating and cross pollinating best practice by giving a voice to the experts working on the front line of education.

ReferencesNiedderer, K. and Townsend, K. (2011) Expanding craft: Reappraising the value of skill. Craft Research. [online] 2. [Accessed 8 November 2013].

Pollanen, S. (2011), Beyond Craft and Art: A pedagogical model for craft as self- expression, International Journal of Education through Art. [online]. 7 (2). [Accessed 20 November 2013].

Sigman, A. (2008) Practically Minded: The benefits of Mechanisms Associated with a Practical Skills-Based Curriculum. Ruskin Mill Educational Trust p.16

Master Thesis Presentations

In March the first group of MSc students in Practical Skills Therapeutic Education will hand in their individual research projects. This event is a landmark for Ruskin Mill Trust and Crossfields Institute, since a connection between the practical world of activities in the Colleges and the academic world of research and development in education becomes real in each of these projects. The task of the Field Centre is to build on these connections and widen them, to benefit all colleges and the public field of educational research. In July 2014, all MSc projects from the first group of MSc students will be presented and published in due course.

16

inIsis - The Field Centre Research Journal Vol.1 No.1 2014

Beholding a question: re-imagining thinkingby Dr. Aksel Hugo

It was after all conceived, what Johann Gottlieb Fichte on a November day 1793, as hit by lightning after hours of pondering beside his warm winter oven, realised (the sudden thought surprised him): that the deed by which self-consciousness takes hold of itself evidently is knowing. The I knows itself as created by itself. The thinking I and the conceived I, knowing and the object of knowing, are one. And all knowing is sourced in this point of unity, and not in scattered observation.

Henrik Steffens (1841)

The human being is no idle spectator towards the world, who inside his mind pictorially repeats the activities in cosmos without any hand in the matter, but the active co-creator of the world process; pondering inquiring knowing (Erkennen), is the most complete organ of the organism of the universe.

Rudolf Steiner (1891)

Universally then, since man is nothing, he can. Infinite capacity. Michel Serres (1991)

17

Detail from The Jewish Bride by Rembrandt, 1662


18 19

It takes effort to carry a question and sustain it over time. What characterises a good researcher is the perseverance of this silent will, this carrying capacity of a careful holding of the unresolved. As far as I know, this faculty has not been given any name. Yet, it is indeed a key competence in all human inquiry and making. This article attempts a first naming and framing of this capacity in the context of research education and adult pedagogy.

Reviewing the night sideTo understand how thinking itself catches what it takes hold of is no simple task, since thinking needs to seize itself. We must awaken then, as Fichte indicates, in the will that is implicit in the activity of thinking. To explore this activity, I will concentrate on its appearance when it is still pure and in its nascency. In an attempt to make thinking in its becoming tangible, I will study the ways it manifests itself. As cases I will use what we have at hand, and review how each inquirer situates and beholds his or her question. Leaving the ”bright side” (their answers) behind and portraying the ”night side” (their positioning of their questions), the inquiry process leads us into a review of the previous articles: In each of them, how is the question situated and beheld?

In childhood, thinking awakens in our sensory engagement with the world. Everything we see and sense has a potential to awaken a sense of wonder. If we take heed of this particular state of ’being-in-wonder’; if we sustain ’not-knowing’ to let it grow; carry it over time as in a pregnancy, as something that may give birth, if we awaken to sense this type of will, then there we have IT, that human faculty in which Socrates sourced his pedagogy: We have the beholding of a question. To map the history of ’the beholding of a question’, we can in each case ask where it comes from, sits and how it develops?

Five case storiesJo Naden tells us that water has been the question of her life. She even hints at a possible connection in this interest to having been born in the town of Buxton, well known for its spring water. So if we want to source where her innate interest comes from and how it sits in her work, we are led back to a biography. Behind her wild laboratory work (pouring bees wax into a river) there was a long artistic inquiry process. And behind this artistic process lies a long interest with a deep rooting: ”I was always interested in the formative qualities of water”.

If we follow Jo’s history from childhood onwards, we see how the question change format. From playful wonder it is transposed to a conscious artistic inquiry process ”.. the force of water, how it appears, like in limestone, and how it manifests itself in sculpture”. Now it gets transposed yet again, this time out of the art studio back into the river. Here an interesting parallel occurs. As the chemist at one point takes his question into a laboratory to work with it in a full scale format, so the artist here creates her own ’wild laboratory’. Hence the result; the fish she catches does not need any translation. It presents itself as an answer to her intuitive question in full format. Faced with this ”fish”, we are confronted with yet another riddle. As a fact it poses us a question and calls for the activity of thinking: So how can we understand the dynamics of this event itself?

It is at this point of the story that Victor Schauberger enters, since his particular talent was to do exactly this: To unite his thinking with the dynamics of water event. If we know Goethe’s way of engaging attentively in natural phenomena as a reference point, we see there is a parallel. The approach they both propose is to let your thinking be moulded and shaped through sensuous engagement with phenomena. In his approach to the study of plants, Craig Holdrege makes this process of sensitising ourselves through our sensory engagement to a major future task for natural and environmental science education. What he proposes as an adult educator is here the full reversal of what we normally imagine science education. The scientist or researcher here is becoming the learner, and nature as a living being, in this case the plant, is becoming the teacher.

From Schauberger’s thinking, the step to get to Wittgenstein and Troy Vine is small: Take away the water, and accentuate how thinking in its perceptual activity is aware of its own activity (act of seeing) as well as what it is perceiving (colour phenomena). What thinking is teaching the will is to be able to behold and examine itself as acting in seeing. And further, to discern layers of lawfulness connected to phenomena of colour in its sensuous pure appearances . What they invite to practice is a capacity to consciously behold interplay between seeing and colour appearance. The inquiry is framed within an awareness of intention and attention in exploring this interplay. In this conscious beholding, certain conditions are kept constant while others are being varied.

We can expand the field of inquiry from one sense (seeing) to more senses and their interaction with material, place and people. Then we arrive at the wider space in which the questions that Sue Reed reports from are situated. The task of a meta-consciousness, of waking up in conscious holding of a particular field of attention is however the same. In any creative act of making (e.g. craft-based therapeutic education) it is possible to accompany the journey with a conscious holding of questions in and around the activity. Again certain parameters are kept constant while others are being varied. If the holding space is shared, we have a collaborative process of action inquiry. Collaborative methodologies in embodied craft practice are here developed and at the same time made transparent to thinking. The process of awakening thinking to behold and accompany will activities is the same, whether the act is an inner (movements of attention in seeing) or an outer (therapeutic craft activities with young adults).

The study by Matt Biggs is again situating the question inside a culture of practice. He argues for the need of research to let questions descend into into the hands and feet of the practitioners. Within this context his question situates itself around one particular type of challenge; impulse control disorders. When his professional context unites with a defined area of academic inquiry, his question can breathe in a balanced way between context and focus, experience and theory. Within this research context Matt again carves out two separate areas of inquiry that he first will keep apart and then unite: First the internal conditions; ”the development of executive function capacities, as they give rise to the ability to temper ones impulses”, then the external; ”how the material influence or affordance on the learner through their interaction with it” are studied. We see here actually two capacities: (1) context awareness around a question; knowing why you are focusing on what you look at whilst looking at it, and (2) capacity within this space to freely move the beholding from one set of conditions to another set. The power and capacity to freely hold, shift, move inside, outside, around and also in between the two questions is the analytical power.

Re-imagining thinkingAs thinking involves itself in the sensory world it gains momentum. And as it gains momentum it also gains independency. As researchers we can slowly learn

to awaken our will, and accompany our thinking wherever it operates with a conscious framing. As a result the capacity to frame and even to flexibly shift frames is strengthened. We become independent researchers. We can use this capacity, as Fichte did, to bend it back onto itself. What we discover then, is that thinking is highly underestimated. It does not only operate in abstractions, but penetrates sense perception as movements of attention. It is not only involved in cognition, but will accompany our hands, expressions, language, social interactions and feeling life. As the squirrel Ratatosk in Yggdrasil, it is the mediator that connects faculties into a coherent diversity; our ecology of ways of knowing.

Such an extended understanding of thinking has implications for our understanding of research. In life as in work life there are as many fields of research as there are beholdings of questions. It is the conscious framing and holding that characterises research, as self-restricted (bound) and thereby freed (transparent to its own activity within this set beholding) movements of attention.

If we sensitise ourselves as human learners, we can see in ourselves - as in all these examples - how our beholding of questions may carry red threads (connecting the dots) in our biographies. What is that invisible will which, with still concentration, beholds the unresolved? Since it is so familiar to us and yet unknown, does it not resemble that fine secret which water is to the fish? Does this will, in spite of operating in the dark, not belong to our being? Is it not a collector of all those scattered pieces! Yes, here the end is reaching back to where we began with Isis as rebuilder: does it not liken Isis? Now I awaken again, to ask (and share the question) as researcher in human becoming: who, if not me, is she resurrecting?

Steffens, H. (1841) In: Roder, F. (1995) Menschwer-dung des Menschen, Meyer, p. 35

Steiner, R. (1891) In: Selg, P. (2012) Rudolf Steiner. Bd. I, Verlag Ita Wegman Institut, pp. 357-358

Serres, M. (1991) The Troubadour of Knowledge, The University of Michigan Press, p. 155.

The Field Centre: www.thefieldcentre.org.uk

Imagineunderstanding thinking by perceiving it

and sensing how your questions sit

Imagineunderstanding colour by seeing

and space by ways of being

Imagineunderstanding teaching

by being the learner

inisis - the fieldthefieldcentre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/inisis...process the same...

Documents