Reflections on the role film plays in the arts and creative education

1. How do we look for something
when we don’t know what it is?
IMAGINATION, CREATIVITY, AND THE
MOVING IMAGE
Mark Reid, BFI Education
ITEM Conference 24th January 2018

2. SURPRISE!

3. About BFI….

4. BFI Education…

5. Meno’s Paradox
How will you look for [something]," he
asks, "when you do not know at all what it
is?”
Plato’s Meno, Sections 80 – 86
quoted in Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost

6. If the only tool you have is a
yardstick, you look for what you
can measure.
Elliot Eisner, Arts and the Creation of Mind, 2002

7. Consider the implications of the relationship between
forms of representation for the selection of content in
the school curriculum. Learning to use particular forms
of representation is also learning to think and represent
meaning in particular ways. How broad is the current
distribution? What forms of representation are
emphasized? In what forms are students expected to
become “literate”? What modes of cognition are
stimulated, practiced, and refined by the forms that are
made available?
Arts and the Creation of Mind
Elliott Eisner (2002)

8. ‘The Arts..
• Slow down perception
• Invite us to look [and listen] hard
• Give us permission to explore and play.’

9. Listening closely
(hide the screen, Mark!)

10. Looking closely
Shot no.. 5, 4 mins 14
https://youtu.be/Ee4SfQNWNpE?t=4m15s

11. character setting
story mood
Tell Me Aidan Chambers/ CLPE 1992

12. Looking closely
Shot no.. 5, 4 mins 14
https://youtu.be/Ee4SfQNWNpE?t=4m15s

13. puzzles similarities
surprises senses
Tell Me Aidan Chambers/ CLPE 1992

14. REPRESENTATION
And…
INSCRIPTION
EDITING
COMMUNICATION

15. SURPRISE!

16. What surprise looks like
Full Moon and Little Frieda
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.
Ted Hughes

17. INSCRIPTION EDITING
COMMUNICATION SURPRISE
https://youtu.be/Ee4SfQNWNpE ?t=4m15s

18. What did you find that you didn’t know you
were looking for?

19. IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING
Slow down children’s perceptions
Explore the potential of film – watching and making
Use constraints in creative tasks: Lumiere Minutes
http://www.cinematheque.fr/cinema100ansdejeunesse/en/experiences-de-cinema/lumiere-
minutes.html
Help children look closely at the things they make…

20. …and make room for surprise!