Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Creativity

A creative raft-building project at one setting prompted a range of
learning opportunities and discussions about the wider world. The
nursery's artist-in-residence Rosie Potter explains.

At Greenfield's Children's Centre in Southall, 2015 has been a year when children's expressive curiosity has centred on the alliterative pairing of boats and bees.

Working together with fellow artist-in-residence Kirstie Reid - both of us from Wimbledon College, University of the Arts London - we took the children's interest in travel and natural history as a starting point for our creative engagement. We observed, in particular at this time, their fascination with water transport and insect life.

Initially, this raised questions about floating, sinking, natural habitats, flight and survival. It then led to considerations of wider global issues, including the devastating prospect of a world without bees. Up for discussion, too, was the topical issue of thousands of refugees trying to cross the seas in unreliable vessels to escape persecution.

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