Art and Creativity in Reggio Emilia

Exploring the Role and Potential of Ateliers in Early Childhood Education

Vea Vecchi

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136992216
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Education
• Categoría: Education General

This book explores the contribution of and art and creativity to early education, and examines the role of the atelier (an arts workshop in a school) and atelierista (an educator with an arts background) in the pioneering pre-schools of Reggio Emilia. It does so through the unique experience of Vea Vecchi, one of the first atelieristas to be appointed in Reggio Emilia in 1970.

Part memoir, part conversation and part reflection, the book provides a unique insider perspective on the pedagogical work of this extraordinary local project, which continues to be a source of inspiration to early childhood practitioners and policy makers worldwide.

Vea's writing, full of beautiful examples, draws the reader in as she explains the history of the atelier and the evolving role of the atelierista. Key themes of the book include:

• processes of learning and knowledge construction

• the theory of the hundred languages of childhood and the role of poetic languages

• the importance of organisation, ways of working and tools, in particular pedagogical documentation

• the vital contribution of the physical environment

• the relationship between the atelier, the atelierista, the school and its teachers

This enlightening book is essential reading for students, practitioners, policy makers and researchers in early childhood education, and also for all those in other fields of education interested in the relationship between the arts and learning.

Chapter 1
Introduction

But the atelier was most of all a place of research (…). We have always found it a privilege to be able to encounter the fascinating multiple games that can be played with images: turning a poppy into a spot, a light, a bird in flight, a lighted ghost, a handful of red petals within a field of green and yellow wheat…

(Malaguzzi, 1998: 74–75)

Little has been recounted to date of ateliers in Reggio Emilia’s municipal schools for children from 3 months to 6 years, and their contribution to constructing a pedagogical identity in the schools. Ateliers have been discussed by people external to the group working in Reggio Emilia, but from Reggio itself only Loris Malaguzzi, in a few sober and lovely pages in The Hundred Languages of Children (Malaguzzi, 1998: 49–97), has spoken about them. He entrusted ateliers in schools with a mission that held within it a wish: that the atelier act as guarantor for the freshness and originality of an approach to things.

Now, after thirty years in the atelier of the scuola comunale dell’infanzia Diana, I would like to talk of ateliers (for readers not familiar with ateliers, I end this chapter with a short note). I do not intend to attempt at rigorously situating ateliers in an historical context, nor do I propose an autobiographical story. What I do propose, filtered through memories of personal experience, is reflection on the pedagogical contribution that the presence of an atelier and the work of an atelierista can make to schools and educational work in general, the extent to which expressive ‘languages’ can be advantaged and evolved when they are woven into a pedagogy that considers them important for the processes of knowledge.

In the absence of precedents, teachers like myself with a background in the arts called to work in the municipal schools in Reggio Emilia were given the name ‘atelierista’. This name was invented for a completely new kind of work, and the name contains a clear and immediate reference to the nature of that work.

The term ‘atelier’ harks back romantically to the studios of Bohemian artists, and in pedagogical thinking in Reggio it has been revisited and reinterpreted to become synonymous with places where project work – progettare – is associated with things taking shape through action; places where brains, hands, sensibilities, rationality, emotion and imagination all work together in close cooperation. Our everyday language contains and implies an infinite series of virtual meanings made to emerge at intervals by cultural currents and emotional waves, assigning them with new value and meaning. In the international pedagogy connected with Reggio Children, the term ‘atelier’ – together with the presence of an atelierista in schools – has come to have a clear, shared value. It stands for the presence of something giving a direction to educational thinking, in which the aesthetic dimension has a new importance and appreciable pedagogical and cultural value.

I have divided this book into chapters that deal more specifically with certain topics that, to my mind, represent the Reggio philosophy, seen from the point of view of the atelier. I have purposely avoided exploring and reflecting on the broader issues of Reggio philosophy in order not to risk generalizing and repeating ideas now well known. Other people are better placed to do this and in some cases have already done so.

What I would like to do is to outline the culture of the atelier and some of its distinctive traits; a culture which has been capable, together with children, teachers, pedagogistas and families, of producing a form of mutual confrontation and dialogue – in Italian we say ‘confronto’¹ – between different approaches and ways of thinking that has shown itself to be so bubbling with possibilities and potential ways forward in Reggio Emilia’s educational practice and schools.

Many voices other than my own make an appearance in this book: pedagogistas, teachers, atelieristas, architects, graphic artists and administrators. For example, you can hear the voices of two pedagogistas talking together in Chapter 4, the voice of an administrator in Chapter 5, and two architects in a conversation with three pedagogistas in Chapter 7. Their intelligent contributions enrich my opinions and in a small way represent the work of interweaving and exchange of opinion between people with different competencies, which forms the basis of the work in Reggio Emilia’s nidi and scuole. They are just a small part of the multitude of people who have contributed to constructing our reality: the children, the people working in the nidi and scuole, pedagogistas, administrators and families. These conversations, which were recorded, transcribed and edited to maintain the rhythm of spoken conversation, have had to be cut because they proved too long for the available space. Selecting was not easy and I hope the acuteness and passion of the contributors can be sensed.

I would also have liked the voices of other teachers and atelieristas to appear in the book because many people, many competencies, have contributed to the invention and making of ateliers in the schools of Reggio Emilia. However, limitations of space made this impossible.

The contributions taken from various authors quoted in this book should not be seen as a collection of erudite citations. The thoughts of these people have been my travelling companions while writing. When we contemplate a particular theme, I believe we often find phrases and thoughts in material we chance to read that feel close to our own thinking and clarify it; a sort of virtual round table that can be amusing at times.

I would like to specify just one more thing. In this book, I have freely alternated personal ideas with examples of school practice which more clearly communicate the atelier’s role and make it possible to get past the too specific, restricted confines to which schools and culture would have it relegated. For greater clarity and rhythm in reading, a different character has been used for these stories.

Note on the atelier

Ateliers as spaces, as opportunities for techniques and expression, are present both in the nidi and scuole dell’infanzia, however, the person of the atelierista is only present in scuole dell’infanzia. This is not because we consider the atelierista’s role to be of little importance with small children but because atelieristas are considered simply too expensive for schools like the nidi which have high running costs. However, the 0–6 pedagogical project has made it possible for exchanges of competencies to take place between nidi and scuole dell’infanzia and this is clearly visible in Reggio nidi.

I hope that an idea of what an atelier is will emerge, at least in part, from reading the book. There follows a brief description for those readers who have never visited the municipal schools in Reggio Emilia.

Figure 1.1 The atelier and atelierista (author Vea Vecchi) in the scuola comunale dell’infanzia Diana

Working with possibilities offered by the available space, the atelier should be large enough to contain several children and activities and connected, visually and otherwise, with the rest of the school. It will be equipped with tools: tables, containers for materials, computer, printer, digital cameras, easels for painting, surfaces for working with clay, an oven for ceramic work, tape-recorder, a microscope and other equipment depending on the funds available. Together with digital material there will be a large quantity of traditional materials: different types of colours for painting and drawing in different consistencies and shades; black, white and red clay, oxides of different colours, colours for ceramic work; wire in different thicknesses, cutters, recycled and discarded materials… and many more. Tools and materials that make it possible for the children to have experiences in which their thinking takes on different forms (visual, musical, dance, verbal).

The atelierista is a person with an artistic background who comes into schools through a public examination. She does not have an educational background – she is not a qualified teacher. Her professional development and her work with children in schools is strongly supported through relationships with teachers and pedagogistas and specific activities such as documentation.

Chapter 2
Aesthetics/Poetics

It would be truly naïve to imagine that the mere presence of an atelierista might constitute an important change in learning if the atelier culture and the pedagogical culture do not reciprocally ‘listen’ to each other or are not both of quality. To introduce an atelier into a school means that materials available for children’s use will most probably increase in number, that techniques and the formal qualities of final products will improve. Above all, however, it is an approach, the relation with things that must be activated through certain processes where the aesthetic dimension is a significant, fundamental presence.

To my mind an indispensable premise for ideas about the atelier is a reflection on the role of aesthetic dimensions in learning and education in general – and a topic deserving of deeper evaluation and understanding. The topic is a difficult one but must at least be mentioned, for among Reggio pedagogy’s most original features is an acceptance of aesthetics as one of the important dimensions in the life of our species and, therefore, also in education and in learning. While in Reggio schools the role of an aesthetic dimension can be felt immediately, the opposite is usually true and the world of education generally keeps a distance from the subject. I do not think a true understanding of Reggio pedagogy is possible without due consideration of this issue; an issue which can be approached from various points of view and studied in different ways. For my part, I will discuss it mainly with a view to giving far more attention to the role of atelier and atelierista in places of education and in learning.

Undoubtedly it is difficult to say simply and clearly what is meant by an aesthetic dimension. Perhaps first and foremost it is a process of empathy relating the Self to things and things to each other. It is like a slim thread or aspiration to quality that makes us choose one word over another, the same for a colour or shade, a certain piece of music, a mathematical formula or the taste of a food. It is an attitude of care and attention for the things we do, a desire for meaning; it is curiosity and wonder; it is the opposite of indifference and carelessness, of conformity, of absence of participation and feeling.

The aesthetic dimension is certainly not only these things. On the level of education it deserves deep thought and I am confident its presence, together with awareness of it, would raise the quality both of relations with the surrounding world and of learning processes in schools and in education. With the help of some stories to illustrate, I will try to argue how sensory perception, pleasure and the power to seduce – what Malaguzzi called the ‘aesthetic vibration’ – can become activators of learning; how they are able to support and nourish kinds of knowledge not based uniquely on information; and how, by avoiding simply definable categories, they can lead to the sensitive empathy and relation with things which creates connections.

I believe everyone senses on entering Reggio Emilia’s municipal schools how the presence of an atelier and atelierista gives them particularly well cared for physical environments, including striking products and documentation by children and teachers. However, not all visitors fully appreciate their positive educational value. Reflection is needed in order to understand to what extent Reggio Emilia’s recognition of aesthetics affects not simply such appearances, but a way of ‘doing’ school and consequently learning by children and adults and the pedagogical philosophy. This is the most difficult part of the story to tell and we can attempt to do it through examples and personal experience.

Aesthetics as meta-structure

It is as well to clarify from the beginning that for us educators in Reggio each discipline – or rather language – is made up of rationality, imagination, emotion and aesthetics. Cultures which rigidly separate these qualities and processes of thinking inevitably tend to subtract part of the processes from the various disciplines or languages. They recognize the rational part of an engineer, the imaginative part of an architect, the cognitive part of a mathematician, the expressive part of an artist and so on, in simpl...