Hi Chuck and list

Thank you for your reply. Thats all really useful, thank you.

I dont work with young children - Like many people in further and higher education I have been working with young people between the ages of 15 and 25 on the whole, and also with people who are much older. I do have an academic colleague who works alongside young children- using drawing and image making as way to connect to experiences of emotional trauma and so I know a little about the child development field from that perspective  I was interested to pick up other methods and approaches when I asked you my Q1. 

I drew a lot as a child: my father worked at IBM and he brought home stacks of discarded, folded perforated sheets of computer paper that seemed to have no end to me, and I drew and drew and drew.  I can remember as though it was yesterday the moment when I realised that humans don't bend their legs back from the waist when they squat or kneel. By drawing I realised that humans have knees and that moment of observation is still a bright flash in my mind - I can remember where I was and the details of the room - it was such a revelation.  This could have been when I was at the development stage you describe in your post. 

More recently :-), I have been learning about dementia and dementia care working collaboratively with an interdisciplinary, group of research colleagues, and this is the area that particularly interests me in relation to this thread.  I expect you are aware that it is now being found that creative practices from art and design - like drawing, making things, can have a very positive affect on the lives of people living with dementia including their carers ( and everyone else too)  I went to a workshop recently where people with dementia were drawing, painting and making things with joy and attention evident again on their faces, in some cases to the amazement of their carers. Some of these people had not made 'art' type objects before and so it seems that even when some areas of the brain are dimming, new areas can light up. 

In the past Art and Design education has had a tendency to limit wider, active engagement in the arts: often making it a spectator rather than a participatory sport in the case of those deemed professionally unskilled,  uninitiated . The global crisis anticipated as a result of living longer, the rising numbers of older people, brings us opportunities to reconfigure and also to access the required funding streams you mention when you say:  " Art education has had to suffer from its inability to convince those who control educational budgets of the profound benefits it offers to every mind. We need a deeper scientifically grounded rationale to go along with the pleasures and benefits we know from experience."  Its going to be an economic as well as a social and cultural imperative.

Work like Jinan's interests me because amongst other things it questions the western ideal and conceptualisation of ' Art and Design' as an exclusive or elite practice - and I see a future where drawing, making and fixing things - will be more accessible, joyous, health making pastimes with potential to reduce pills, tranquillisers etc for people of every age.

Im still not sure about the difference between drawing the tree one "actually sees", as opposed to the tree one feels and knows from experience. You didn't answer my questions 2 and 3. Perhaps my story took too long to get to them - so I can let you off. :-) 

Cheers  and thanks 
Fiona 

www.a-brand.co.uk
www.vimeo.com/fionacandy


Sent from my iPad

On 10 Jun 2014, at 14:42, Charles Burnette <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Fiona, Jinan, and list,
> 
> 
> Chuck you write (to Jinan):
> 
>>> “…Children say what they are drawing, but at certain ages their drawings show how they envision a tree, castle, or dinosaur, not what it looks like. It is quite different when they try to draw what they actually see. If this is what your students are doing, can you explain how they construct the image and what their thoughts are as they do it?” >>
> I find I am rather puzzled by your comment about the difference between children’s “envisioning” and “what they actually see”. I had interpreted Jinan’s post as bringing our attention to the opportunities and challenges of exactly this, and the way that education affects it. You ask Jinan about how the children  >>“construct the image and what their thoughts are as they do it?” >> Aren’t thoughts exactly what a drawing is? An expression of the workings of an individual human mind? 
> 
> So  Q 1: Please can you explain what more you think we can gain from further exploring the mental world of his students as they draw – and indicate the kind of techniques that are available and appropriate to his educational goals.  I would find that very useful to know more about.
> 
> Fiona, Perhaps you are not used to working with very young children who cross a threshold around seven: before that they are directed more by what they imagine than what they see. (You can test this by trying to get them to draw an actual object in their field of view. Generally speaking, they draw what they actually see when they are developmentally ready to do it. As they do so, they become quite critical of their skills and can become discouraged. They are also acquiring more sophisticated language, and social skills at the time and this probably plays in to their thoughts. It is a challenging transition time for them. I wanted to know the ages of Jinan’s students to better understand their stage of development. 
> 
> One reason it is important to know how the brain manages different kinds of information during thought, is that it can provide better ways to “see" the interplay of language, vision, and motor skills; to look deeper into how our educational efforts might register in different minds at different levels of development, and in different cultures. We might begin to understand why some people love to draw and others find it challenging. We might even begin to understand if drawing could be effected by syndromes like verbal dyslexia (which neuroscience has helped to locate and define). 
> We might even have some human centered basis for the techniques we find useful. Art education has had to suffer from its inability to convince those who control educational budgets of the profound benefits it offers to every mind. We need a deeper scientifically grounded rationale to go along with the pleasures 
> and benefits we know from experience. 
> 
> There is a new book from Oxford University Press, "The Aesthetic Brain", by Anjan Chatterjee, that has taken on the issues of beauty, pleasure and art from the perspective of neuroscience. He has written an excellent introduction to the application of scientific thought to such questions as what is art, is there  an instinct for art, and how can we be pleased by such radically different expressions. You will be surprised at how well he approaches such questions (and how well he answers them.) His book sits alongside "The Age of Insight", by Eric Kandel as an early bridge to the future of art and design education.
> 
> Or, so I believe,
> Chuck
> 
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