Hi Lee – here are some more responses to your note, ‘doodles’ and writings of the 26^th January. I’m fascinated by the responses they evoked in me and as I respond I’ll learn more about these responses in relation to your influence in my learning. I’m sharing these responses with Andy Henon whose ‘Creativity Works’ and commitment as a socially engaged artist I drew attention to in the workshop. I’ve also included a url to Alan Rayner’s ideas on inclusionality at the end of my responses.

On 26 Jan 2010, at 10:16, Lee Nicole Scott wrote:

I thought I would send you the doodles from  your Durban days- in other words, when you were chatting away to us at the Botanic gardens conference venue, I was doodling and they are all like the Zimbabwean sculptures that were on show at the time. Those sculptures were beautiful weren’t they?

Jack - they were beautiful – here’s a picture of ‘mutual love’ that I particularly liked along with ‘Deep Affection’ which I’ve already sent on.

Lee - I am also busy getting help with the editing of the mini-movie I made of you and will send that to you soon.  I found it really serendipitous that when I chose the music for the piece , it was named ‘ In the Moment’ . It is so perfect, ‘coz you playing with the cards(there and then) was just soooo ‘in the moment’. Of course I am titling the movie the same!

Jack – I’m looking forward very much to seeing the mini-movie. ‘In the Moment’ fits so well, especially as your produced the ‘doodles’ below in the workshop as I was focusing on the importance of making public the embodied knowledge of the participating educators, gaining academic accreditation/legitimacy for the knowledge and sharing it as a gift through the internet.

Lee-  I think the movie is great, I think the cards are wonderful because they are so easy to respond to and I love the way the images evoke responses. The brain is so immediate in its thinking-subconscious to the fore! I would appreciate it if you could think of any readings that discuss this kind of thing-i.e.- the power of the unconscious/subconscious, the social adeptness and desire of us human beans(beings) to tell stories and possibly the whole thing about ‘playing’ being so important. In order to create one has to be playful; otherwise you’re (me) are buggared. I cannot be too ser-reee-us( colloquial: serious); my starting point for any painting has to have no binding structures; that all comes later. I don’t mean to imply I only create ‘light and fluffy’, my work can still talk about social /emotional issues, but it has to start from the place of play, like the doodles I have sent you. I would not of thought of these little drawings as having any relevance had Joan not seen them and suggested you might enjoy them. Hey!- this way you don’t have to worry about finding space in your suitcase for them- hahaa.

Jack – Smiling with the pleasure your playfulness evokes. Your playfulness creates a space of exciting and pleasurable freedom to explore and enquire. I like Gregory Bateson’s point that humour is vital to social evolution. In responding to your ‘doodles’ below I hope they show that they are highly relevant to some of the points I was making in the workshop about values that carry hope for the future of humanity, and our own, and about finding ways of making public our embodied knowledge as educators in higher education. I also think that your ‘doodles’ are significant in relation to self-studies of transformative higher education.

Lee - An interesting conversation with Joan this last Friday in one of her self study forums( lovely, casual, interactive and informative)reminded me that I talk of painting as ‘work’ and I am sure most artists/writers/ creators probably do. This ties in with that Calvinist work ethic thing – but the point I am on about is noticing the wholism/holism between the way my life as an artist/creator is, and the way it feeds my teaching life. I would not be the kind of artist, visa versa teacher/lecturer, social person that I am, if I had not existed/experienced all that I have. This is what you call embodied knowledge- yes? And all this embodied knowledge show cases my values and talents (hopefully) on a daily basis – with out getting too touchy feely  I dare say!

Anyway, time to get on with it.

Cheers- have a beaut day and looking forward to hearing from you.

Lee

Jack - I do like your point and question:

I would not be the kind of artist, visa versa teacher/lecturer, social person that I am, if I had not existed/experienced all that I have. This is what you call embodied knowledge- yes? And all this embodied knowledge show cases my values and talents (hopefully) on a daily basis – with out getting too touchy feely  I dare say!

I do think of embodied knowledge in this way. This is why I stress the importance of producing some autobiographical writings that can clarify for oneself the values that given meaning and purpose to our lives and that have emerged in our creative and critical responses to our unique experiences and contexts. I think we can go further than showing our values and talents on a daily basis, although this is the bedrock of our educational practices. I think we can produce explanations for our educational influences in our own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of the social formations in which we live and work. I call these explanations living educational theories, to distinguish them from the explanations derived from the propositional theories of the disciplines of education. I think that our explanatory principles in our explanations will be given in terms of our values, talents and understandings of the most advanced social theories of the day. In the course of producing such explanations our embodied knowledge evolves. We can offer these explanations are gifts to others which they are free to use in producing their own living educational theories.

I’m smiling at the idea of ‘with out getting too touchy feely  I dare say!’ I think we have a long way to go in learning how to respond authentically to each other in ways that acknowledge the importance of compassion, loving recognition, care, freedom, affection, empathy and justice amongst other values. I think we have a long way to go in learning how to rechannel responses of anger, violence, aggression and hate into the quality of a loving dynamic energy with spiritual resilience, described by Joan Walton (http://www.actionresearch.net/living/walton.shtml )

I think of ‘touchy feely’ being the expression of affection with, for example, a hug.

The Special Interest Group of AERA on the self-study of teacher education practices (S-STEP) became known as the SIG that hugs ! I’m all for becoming more ‘touchy feely’ when this means the expression of affection through a hug !

Here are some responses to the drawings and writings you produced in the workshop I led at DUT on the 8/9 December 2009.

With the eye at the centre I feel the gaze of another that is direct, immediate, open and desiring relationship and engagement. It is the quality of gaze that I hope that I communicate in my relationship with others, especially in my educational relationships. My gaze then moves to the hand and the two faces I see behind the eye. The hand feels protective as if it may need to be removed through trust, before the person feels safe to share themselves with another. The second image intrigues me because it has a ‘mask-like’ quality of unresponsiveness of ‘beyond knowing’.

As my gaze takes in all of the image, I feel that it carries a life-enhancing energy and evokes the embodied expression of this energy in me. The feathers in the wing on the right of the image evoke my aesthetic response in a desire to express beauty in the world in the way we appear and express ourselves with others.

My delight in receiving and responding to the drawings is related to your point that:

my starting point for any painting has to have no binding structures; that all comes later. I don’t mean to imply I only create ‘light and fluffy’, my work can still talk about social /emotional issues, but it has to start from the place of play, like the doodles I have sent you.

My delight is related to your creative response to the ‘educational space’ of the workshop.

Whatever I was doing, you were exercising your creativity in your responses in your drawings. As you say, they emerged from a place of play, with no binding structure. You created a response in your ‘doodles’ which is helping me to become clearer about what I value and why and how I can represent both in explanations of my educational influence.

I also liked your jottings below:

I identify with your desire to share your knowledge of your approach to teaching drawing. I like the idea of your students filming you and asking questions about the process. I like your foci on perceptions on how world views shift and the influences (my language) in your own and your students learning.

I think that you could co-create with your students, explanations (living theories) of your educational influences in your own learning and in each others’ learning. You could check the validity of any claims you might make about your educational influence in the others’ learning with those participating, in a validation group. You could share your explanations of influence with the wider world (hopefully through the web).

Because of my evolving interest in inclusionality, following Alan Rayners ideas of inclusionality as a relationally dynamic awareness of space and boundaries as connective, continuous, reflexive and co-creative, I am making an inclusional, and ecological response, to the image of the leaf and the individual. I am bringing into my response my knowledge that human beings need the oxygen produced by plants and sunlight, to breathe, to live. We all live in complex ecologies that influence our lives. This image gives me a visual representation that helps me to focus my narratives of influence on the importance of recognizing, and integrating into an explanation of influence, the complex ecologies in which we live and work.

For Alan Rayner’s writings on inclusionality see http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/

For Andy Henon’s Creativity Works see http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/henon/creativityworkslowah.pdf (allow time to download )

Love Jack, 27^th January 2010.