Reflections on Mercatello sul Metauro

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P1090160Our experience last week with Angela Ferrario and the retreat participants in Learning and Leading for the Future was wonderful in every way.  We were thrilled to be asked to lead Session One with Angela and participate in her dream of weaving together cultural encounters and excursions with inspired professional development and reflection in the small town of Mercatello sul Metauro, Le Marche, Italy cadcollabPalazzo Donati was our home for the week and Luisa Donati our hostess.  Palazzo Donati is her family's villa and has belonged to them since the town was founded in 1235 when seven families moved from their surrounding castles to build palazzi and form the town.  Pointing to a grand facade across the piazza, Luisa said, "That palazzo was my grandmother's and this one where you will stay was my grandfather's."  It seemed like a Romeo and Juliet's story...only theirs has had a happy ending.  It was a joy to spend time with Luisa who orchestrated a beautiful welcome dinner in the main salon of the  palazzo and prepared our breakfast every morning.  She joined us all week long, for example, enjoying wood fired pizza at one of the farms nearby with friends, and visiting the Antica Stamperia Carpegna where six generations of artisans have made beautiful hand stamped fabric.  They showed us one design that they are working on for Eataly.  Luisa and other friends that Angela has made also came along for many meals and events.  In a short time, we all began to feel as if we were a part of the small town.

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During the week, Ashley and I both shared interactive presentations to lay the foundation for our work with learning for the future.  Participants entered into dialogue with us and with each other about their school contexts and where they each might help to build on strengths in these areas.  Each afternoon we all participated in creative activities of drawing and also print making to explore the importance of creativity, innovation and design in learning for the future.

This week, Angela is hosting John Nimmo and Debbie Leekeenan and another group that will focus on the timely subject of Anti-Bias Education. We toast them as they begin this evening.  Cadwell Collaborative is enjoying a few days in the Piemonte region of Italy, walking the vineyards and drinking very good wine.  All the best to all of you this first month of summer.

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Here's a New Take on Documentation...

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cadcollabWe have been working with Buffalo Public School 33 for three years.  For the second year in a row the Albright Knox Art Gallery has asked the school to install an exhibition of student work.  This year's exhibition is titled Art Makes You Think Bigger...an ingenious observation by one of 33's youngest students.  The exhibition features the connections between art and other subjects;  demonstrates the implementation of inquiry based inter-disciplinary projects; and shows the influence of the Reggio Emilia Approach. Last year we created over 30 panels that were installed directly on the bulletin boards of an Albright gallery.  They were well done and well received.  However, when the exhibition was over, it all had to come down...and to reinstall in the school proved to be a burden...mostly because of the lack of bulletin boards in the school hallways.

This year we invented a new technique.  We measured all 28 of the bulletin boards at the Albright and cut boards exactly to size from triplex cardboard sheets (about 3/4" thick and very sturdy).  These boards served as our "canvas" for each project story.  They will be installed directly over the existing Albright boards.

Having this defined and moveable canvas made the composition of the boards easier.  And, we went a step further by creating a sort of template for each board: a poster with a brief narrative of the project with pictures dividing the narrative in English and Spanish; examples of student work with subtitles; and a brief synopsis of New York State Standards developed during the project.

The exciting part of this process however, is that all 28 pieces will be reinstalled directly in the school hallways...where they belong.  In fact, as we composed the panels on the large cardboard sheets, we installed them in the halls, much to the delight of all the students...as it should be!

BRAVI School 33 students and teachers!

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Does Beauty Hold the World Together?

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IMG_5267Lately, every where I turn, I see the tender, gentle, spring world taking shape around me.  In Vermont, spring comes slowly amidst cold days, and gray days like today.  Yet little by little, the earth turns green and the trees and shrubs move from bud to flower to leaf.  We live in an old apple orchard that is now a cloud of pink and white fragile blooms.  In our orchard, we live on a hill overlooking the Scholten Family Farm, 400 organic acres where we watch 80 Dutch Belt cows graze.  The Scholten Family makes Weybridge Cheese for sale in local markets and beyond.  Now, the fields are plowed and the cows are out. As I watch spring unfold, among other things, I have been listening to National Public Radio's weekly broadcast, On Being, where host, Krista Tippett interviews all kinds of people.  Two of my recent favorites are with cellist, Yoyo Ma, Music Happens Between the Notes, and Nobel Prize winning physicist, Frank Wilczek, Why is the World so Beautiful? In some wonderfully connected ways, Yoyo Ma and Frank Wilczek are speaking about the same things.  What we can't see that holds us, curiosity and vulnerability, knowing and not knowing, being present, and that all life is in constant movement and change, while certain fundamental things remain the same.

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These ideas remind me so much of Vea Vecchi when she speaks about poetics and aesthetics.  Ever since I have known Vea, she has quoted Gregory Bateson who defines aesthetics as "the pattern that connects."  Rather than being something pretty or pleasing, even though it might include those things, aesthetics points to the fabric of life that holds the world together...the unseen, the seen, the in-betweens, the visible and invisible, the emotions, the sense we make of things, what we are naturally drawn to as humans, and the great mystery of the universe that we inhabit.

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What are these "patterns that connect" in the world and inside us?  I think of architect, Christopher Alexander whose research shows that all human beings, when given a choice, will  choose a light filled room rather than a dark one, certain timeless decorative patterns over others, and a wide array of other features.  He wrote about this in his book, A Pattern Language.  Another fascinating aspect of being human that scholar Rhoda Kellogg has researched, shows us that children all over the world, from the beginning of human history, have made marks with sticks in the sand, hands in the mud, pencil on paper in instinctual gestures of circles,  lines, dots and mandalas.  From the time we are very young, we are reaching out to the world to make marks, make patterns and make meaning, to see what we have made reflect back to us who we are in the world.  And then, there are the universal patterns that artist, Sabra Field describes in Cosmic Geometry, repeating patterns in the natural world, microscopic to cosmic, that humans have repeated since the beginning of history, in the man made world in design, art and architecture.

I wrote a blog post several years ago where I quoted some of a TEDx talk that Vea Vecchi gave in Reggio Emilia, Italy.  I quote Vea again here as her words and ideas strongly connect to the themes of this post.  These words seem particularly relevant and meaningful in our world right now .

The atelier (or studio that is not only a central place but also a way of working throughout our schools) has brought many materials and techniques, but also has illuminated a need, not only for children, but for human beings to communicate in a way that rationality and imagination travel together.  We believe in a multiplicity of languages that are integrated and not separated.  We believe that this makes learning and understanding more rich and more complete.  Poetic thought does not separate the imaginative from the cognitive, emotion from the rational, empathy from deep investigation.  It lights up all the senses and perceptions and cultivates an intense relationship with what is all around us.  It constructs thoughts that are not conformist.  And this creates two important elements: solidarity and participation, both of which are the foundation of democracy. To conclude, we believe that identifying and researching beauty and ethics is the indispensible foundation for a livable, sustainable future that everyone speaks about but that seems so difficult to bring about.  It is only with an intelligent heart, with courage and with vision that we can proceed. 

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The Mindful Child (and Adult)

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cad collarThis week we have been at the beach on a small island on the west coast of Florida with our family.  As everyone peels off to head homeward and Ashley and I enjoy one more day, we reflect on how grateful we are to have had this time where land meets sea with our sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren to chase waves and sand pipers, fill buckets with sand, and pick up glistening shells with names like Kitten Paws and Angel Wings. There is perhaps no better place than the ocean to draw us into the present. No matter what our age, most of the time, we let go of our preoccupations, the past and the future, our worries.  We are soothed by the rhythm of the waves, the light on the water, the texture of the sand under our feet and the distant horizon where sea meets sky.  We have so enjoyed this time with our sixteen-month-old granddaughter and our four-year-old grandson.  Watching children this age, no matter where, also brings us into the present moment.

As I reflect on our week, two enormous influences in my life come to mind. The first is the Reggio Emilia approach... in this context in particular, learning side-by-side young children while becoming a participant observer in and documenter of their play and learning.  The second influence is mindfulness as taught by Zen monk and master, Thich Nhat Hanh.  These two approaches guide me in my every day life and interactions.

I have loved reading Art and Creativity in Reggio Emilia by Vea Vecchi and have returned to it often.  In her book, Vea tells learning stories about following her grandchildren through their early years.  I remember watching Vea with her camera and keen eye, observe children at the Diana School in Reggio Emilia.  I wrote about some of these experiences in Bringing Reggio Emilia Home and in Bringing Learning to Life.

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When our sons were 5 and 8, we attended our first retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh in Santa Barbara, California.  Over the years, we have attended several other retreats in Plum Village in France with Thich Nhat Hanh.  These multi-age, international, playful and thoughtful experiences have influenced the way that my family lives in the world.

My nighttime and beach reading collection this week includes A Handful of Quiet: Happiness in Four Pebbles, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and Their Parents) by Eline Snel, and The Mindful Child by Susan Kaiser Greenland.

I heard about these books from my daughter-in-law Caroline, who teaches kindergarten in the Boston Public Schools. She learned about them because this year, the Brookline School Staff Children’s Center, where our grand children attend, is focusing on mindfulness. I highly recommend these books. They will give you background, get you started or add to your understanding and practice.  As Susan Kaiser Greenland writes, mindfulness increases our ability to:

  • approach experience with curiosity and an open mind
  • calm down when we are angry or upset
  • concentrate
  • develop compassion, patience, humility, happiness, generosity and equanimity
  • live gently and in balance with ourselves, others and our world

This week, our grandson, Asher, who is four today, taught us how to do “finger breathing.” Trace the fingers of one of your hands with a finger of the other hand.  Breathe in as you trace up the finger and out as you trace down the other side.  Do this one way and then back again, taking ten deep in and out breaths.  Just breathe and smile.

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Cosmic Geometry

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cad collarCosmic Geometry is the name of a suite of prints made by Sabra Field, a 78 year old artist based in Vermont who works with print media.  I first noticed it when it was being installed on the back wall of Wright Theater at Middlebury College as a mural.  Sabra Field is a graduate of Middlebury College and the installation is the result of a student's collaboration with her to transform a blank wall in the back of a building into something inspiring and provocative. The suite of prints represents repeated patterns in the universe from the cellular level to our galaxy and how these universal patterns in the natural world make their way into the man made world, in architecture, in design, and in our thinking.  The patterns are: spiraling as in the galaxy and a sheep horn, scaling as in fish scales or on an artichoke, branching as in river deltas and leaf veins, and bubbling in soap suds or the hexagonal pattern of a honey comb.

In an interview with the artist published in the Times Argus in 2014, we get a view into her creative thinking and process:

“Our ability to see the cosmos has expanded far beyond what we dreamed half a century ago: from inside our DNA to far beyond our galaxy,” she writes in the show’s introduction. “Instead of overwhelming us, we are enchanted to find in these new images a sense of familiarity.”

Field points to the spirals of a fingerprint or fiddlehead fern, the scales found on an artichoke — her favorite vegetable — or along the many fish her late husband Spencer caught.Her kitchen in East Barnard — population 183 — also came in handy for creating model bubble patterns.

“I took dish detergent and made my own suds, then put it between two pieces of plexiglass.” Why? Because astrophysicists believe the intersection of galaxies exhibit a similar structure. The more Field studies, the more she believes in order over chaos.

“Everything is part of everything, All these phenomena take place at an enormous range of scale, but they do something for me,” the artist says. “The ancient Greeks and the contemporary art world are not that far apart. We’re talking the same language.”

We wanted to have this suite hanging in our house as the idea and the reality of Sabra Field's work is compelling and inspiring.  If you want to see it or her other prints or purchase them go to her website.  We all see patterns everywhere that are living inside of us, part of our cellular structure, and appear in the natural world near and far.  That is indeed, a miracle and a mystery including math, biology, chemistry, art, design, architecture, astro physics and all.  If you come to Middlebury, drive up to campus and find Wright Theater.  Don't miss Cosmic Geometry.

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