Public workshops - a dangerous idea?

I went to an incredibly inspiring RSA lecture by Mark Miodownik http://www.instituteofmaking.org.uk/ where he set out his argument that public libraries were set up to empower the public by giving free access to books at a time when few people could possibly own them or indeed readily access them.  However this has changed and books in general are readily available via technology.  He was arguing that  people are de-skilled in making things and we need access to public workshops we we can make things, but also borrow tools.  He also related this to creativity, innovation, enterprise, industry and cross curricula provision.  

Out of the debate and discussion that followed there was a lamenting in the audience on the demise of the technical colleges and the general split between academic and occupation/craft and skills based education.  There was a great deal of talk about the missed opportunity when some colleges became universities and how the skills based, contextualised learning had been lost in Scotland.  No-one mentioned colleges! I did my best, but it really hit home that for many people there is little knowledge of what the sector has to offer.  Who better to offer a range of skills based public workshops that a college?  What more can we do to raise the profile of the skills based learning opportunities that colleges have to offer?

I think this could be a good area to develop during the Festival of Dangerous Ideas - hands on experience of making, demonstrating cross-curricula skilled based work in action?  Let me know what you think. 

Karen

How Far has the Axis Shifted?

Friday 31 January 2014
College Development Network, Stirling

Further Information and Book Online

Please join us for this one-day event to reflect on how far the axis has shifted.  There will be opportunities to hear from our partner organisations and individuals about how they have the used the inspiration of the festival to change policy and practice, as well as sharing highlights from the festival.  There will also be opportunities to shape next year's festival happening in June 2014 all across Scotland, and beyond!

Be part of the programme!

If you were inspired by the last festival and put your dangerous idea into practice, please email Karen Lawson - we would love to give you the opportunity to share your experiences at this event.

Dangerous June 2014 - Date for your Diary

Key themes will be:

• Small nations, big ideas for education
• Games for learning
• Businesses doing it for themselves: If the trend is for businesses to offer their own degrees, academies and training, what does that say about state funded education?
• Enterprising, entrepreneurial or excluded: What skills do young people really need?
• Engaging learners: do lecturers and teachers have the  required youth work skills?
• Research: dangerous ideas from theory to practice.

Festival of Dangerous Ideas Animation

Summary of the Festival which was held from Thursday 13 June 2013 - Friday 21 June 2013.

Changing The Landscape - Reflection from Paul Gorman

Rant One:  Walk

What the point of the West Highland Way?

Why would anyone want to walk 96 miles? 

What’s the F’ing point of that?  It’s not even a recognised Pilgrimaged. 

And it’s in Scotland – you don’t even get a tan??? 

So what if you can walk 96 miles – who cares?  What does it matter?  You get this certificate at the end – but why does anyone need a certificate?

Mile after mile of path – never ending roads into the distance

The devils staircase  XXXXXX

The long road into Kinlochleven and Fort William -

Body getting sorer by the mile

Feet  - Blisters – burning soles

WHAT IS THE POINT?

Joints aching

Chaffing – Vaseline – Talcum Powder – Savlon

Weather – Sun, Rain, Heat, Cold,

Midges – spray – bites – not being able to stop

WHY PUT YOURSELF THROUGH THIS?

NO reward – All you have is an end goal – and its Fort William.  They put you through hell and give you Fort William as a reward.

BUT WE ALSO HELD HANDS – SOMETHING HAPPENDED TO SOME OF US WHEN WE HELD HANDS.  I WOULD LIKE YOU ALL TO FIND SOMEONE TO HOLD HANDS WITH.  THERE IS NO PRESSURE TO DO THIS.  BUT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO – ASK YOURSELF WHY NOT?  WHAT STOPS YOU?  WHY DO YOU NOT FEEL THE NEED?  WE ARE GOING TO DO THIS FOR 4 MINS – I HAVE SOME PHOTOS.  YOU CAN SPEAK TO YOUR PARTNER.

RANT 2:  LIVING IN HOSTELS – JUST TO COMPLETE THE WALK

Why would anyone want to live alongside strangers in old, smelly hostels?

Beds – matress – others peoples sweat

Snoring – smelly socks and pants

Single beds – SMALL single beds.  Feet bang off bottom rungs

Cooking alongside a bunch of teenagers from the West End of Glasgow and their recorder playing teacher.    PROBLEMS OF KITCHEN LIFE.

RELAXING AND trying to work – load, noisy etc

Eating breakfast with the strangers you spent all of yesterday and all of today and all of tomorrow – no escape?

Why would anyone put there self through this?

BUT WE ALSO STARTED TO RENAME THINGS – WE ASKED OURSELF TO RENAME THE TRESS – THE SKY – THE MOUNTAINS – THE ROADS.  WE STARTED TO WONDER WHY THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE?  ARE THE RULES ALWAYS RIGHT?

LETS RENAME SOME THINGS TOGETHER:
TREE

SKY

COLLEGE

RANT 3: STUCK WITH SAME PEOPLE – JUST TO COMPLETE THE WALK?

Why would anyone chose to spend 5 days with a group of strangers  

Different backgrounds – Different opinions – same stories

No escape – making all decisions together

Seeing their blisters – hearing about their chaffing – thankfully not seeing it

Over and over again – people you would have walked past in the street

Talking

Forever Talking and Speaking

Storytelling

Laughing Moaning

Trying to stay friends

Trying to Stay positive

Exposing your vulnerabilities and trying not to upset others

Listening and Talking

Conversations to fill time

BUT SOMETIMES WE FEEL SILENT.  SOMETIMES WE WALKED BY OURSELF.  SOMETIMES WE CHOSE TO LISTEN TO WHAT WE SAW AROUND US.

I would like us to stop for a moment and close your eyes – We are going to fall silent for 5mins.

SECTION 2

Our dangerous idea was to find an alternative to CPD – so we decide to walk the West Highland Way as Strangers? 

But what’s dangerous about walking?  The paths are formed, the route is marked, the destination is set. 

Our success criteria is easy to measure – if we complete every mile we pass.  If we don’t we fail.  It is easy.

Mathew Failed.  Alison was a Failure. So was Naomi. Frank was an out and out fail.  Keith was the biggest failure (he didn’t even start with us).

I passed.  So did the two Johns, and Alan, and Diane and Eileen, and Mountain Paul and Audrey, so did Stevie.

What’s dangerous about walking the West Highland Way?   If we know what the learning intention – it is easy.  We move from A to B.  If we succeed we get a certificate.  But what do we learn?

·       We learn when we push our self or are pushed by others out with our comfort zone.  Even though it’s painful and you don’t understand why and it’s sometime terrifying.  We learn we ask our self – what stops me, why not?

·       When learn when we unsettle the rules.  Even a tree can be called something else if we imagine it can.

·       We learn by holding hands with someone despite not knowing why?  We begin to understand that touch brings us closer to together. 

·       We learn to trust another human as we are led blindfolded through an unknown world?  Fear soon becomes comforting. 

·       We learn resilience when trying to move a mountain one stone at a time?

·       We learn that not answering questions with an answer is difficult?  Why as educators do we feel to constantly answer the question posed by the student – ask them a question to help them find the answer.

·       We learn that a presentation can take many forms?  Do we always need a powerpoint?  Does it always involve us staying in a classroom? 

·       We learn what a college might look like in the future by re-imaging the one in Fort William after a deadly terrorist attack

·       We learn that time pressure makes us panic and that defaults us back to the what we know – not what we believe?  Lack of space and time to think and collaborate is deadly. 

·       We learn that storytelling is crucial when structuring learning – we learn from the passion in others stories?

·       We learn that the final destination should not be the mark of what we have learn.  How to apply our experience perhaps becomes more important.

SECTION THREE
So how do we change the landscape?

How do we move a mountain one stone at a time?

How do we challenge the learning criteria within the assessment guidelines?

How do we change the way colleges are structured to nurture radical approaches to learning?

I wish we had found the answer to these questions over our 5 days walking the West Highland Way.  But maybe that would be too easy.  Maybe our manifesto would stifle the abundance of creativity and innovation in colleges throughout Scotland.   Maybe it’s not our job to tell you how to change.

We are still process what we have learned – we imagine this will take some time. 

What we do know – the most dangerous thing is to believe everything is fixed.  We walked through a landscape formed over millions of years.  A land shaped from fiery volcanos and frozen ice.  But we still managed to change it – one stone at a time.

We decided to spend a day picking up a stone and moving it a mile.  Then picking up another one and carrying it. 

Did this move a mountain – no.  Would anyone walking the path today notice – probably not.  Do I still have the stone I carried on the final day – yes.  Things change because we do.  To remain the same and not take the risk of accepting change is terrifying. 

I have my stone here.  I don’t know what good it will do to pass it to someone in the room but not offering it means I stick by the rules.  Does anyone want to take this stone from me?

Touching Children should be an expectation not a taboo

A reflective piece
By Catriona Grant

The Festival for Dangerous Ideas allows us to think outside the box, to debate and discuss….. dangerous ideas.  My career in social care and social work spans 23 years. I have had a varied career working in criminal justice with offenders, with women and their children experiencing domestic abuse, in homes with older people, in residential care with adults with learning disabilities and with children - and in various development posts. I have found touch an important part of my practice in welcoming service users, offering them comfort, consoling them, showing that I care about their distress, laughing and playing together and depending on their needs due to age or disability giving intimate personal care.  I have always felt uncomfortable that I sometimes touched the people I worked with, like I had breached a taboo. How can we be in a caring profession where touch is a taboo? How can you nurture and demonstrate care without touch?

At long last I found myself involved in organising an event called “touching children shouldn’t be taboo, it should be an expectation” as part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas.   A plethora of practitioners and invited speakers gave their reflections: that children prefer to carry their rucksacks on their backs than put them in lockers as they are comforted by the weight; that monkeys who can’t predict where their food and shelter comes from reject their babies and become depressed more so than monkey who are fed less often and fewer amounts of food: that cuddles are scientific – there is something chemical and biological happening in our brains and bodies when we hug one another – our stress levels reduce; that in an experiment comparing a young person living with their birth family with a looked after child living in care the looked after child was touched five times in a day, the other young person more than 70!

A panel of experts spoke about their experience of touching kids and their reflections.  Steven Kelly, a Head Teacher in a busy high school reflected that schools are emotionally sterile environments – that a gym teacher would rather fill in an accident form than teach a teenage girl a gymnastics move. At a prize giving he found himself hugging the head boy, proud of achievements but then immediately in a position of an embarrassment embracing the head girl. Children need love especially when they don't deserve it. He reminded us that teenagers are ‘jaggy’ but they need love. How do you touch a young man who sees touch as a provocation? Or girls with sexualised behaviour? A young man coming to terms with his sexuality? Children and young people who have never been loved and hate themselves? We don’t need guidelines, Stephen argued, we need a culture of emotionally intelligent teachers and staff who know when to offer comfort and support to the children in their care.  We are on a journey.

Lesley McDowall, a Quality Improvement Officer, whilst visiting a nursery was reading a story to a little girl who wanted to “sit on her legs”. She welcomed the child on to her knee. She then wanted a cuddle...Lesley became aware of the staff watching her.  Some children, some very young children are in nurseries for up to ten hours, they need support with personal care, to be safe when they throw a tantrum, to be comforted when they hurt themselves and encouraged when learning new things, touch is important to their health and wellbeing.  Would guidelines help?  We need to develop emotional intelligence, use our judgement, and to have a stimulating and nurturing environment, all encouraging touch; we need to be able to talk about it in an open and healthy way. 

Mark Smith, Senior Lecturer at Edinburgh University quoted Steve Biddulph from Bringing up Boys, stating that boys enjoy rough play. In residential child care how do we play, nurture and care for children?   How do you show a child or young person you care for them and like them?  By hugging and nudging them? 

Should touching children be compulsory?  “Heavens no!” says Smith. Some research has shown that guidelines create problems rather than assist.  Football coaches and PE teachers need to be able to support younger children to put their boots and socks on.  He challenged that even some of the education children get about adults touching them is not helpful; we need to challenge the fear of being touched. 

Laura Steckley, from Strathclyde University reflected on research by Tiffany Fields who travelled the world watching people in coffee shops catching up with a friend.   In Puerto Rico they touched one another 140 times…. in London it was zero (a comment from the audience was in Scotland it would be minus two!!!)  Fields theorises that cultures where there is more positive touch have lower levels of aggression.   Research in a hospital, where in the first three days of life skin to skin touch was extended found that three years later there were more touching interactions and the children had higher IQ than those who remained in incubators and cots. There had been a cascade of touch throughout the child’s life - infants touched more as new borns were touched more throughout their lives and they thrived better. 

Our media and novels overly focus on the sexually abused child.  The abused and abuser has replaced angels and demons, it has become evil versus good. We need to talk about touching children, Helen Piper’s research showed that policies and guidelines only made workers more anxious and “hyper sensitive”.  We need to talk about touch within relationships not just touch itself, what our anxieties are, how we protect children from adults intent on harming them and how we support children and young people who are in crisis to move along the road to recovery, how we become more attuned to their needs to be touched and not to be touched.  It’s a big, long conversation!! 

Tam Baillie, the Children and Young Person’s Commissioner in Scotland reflected that as a West of Scotland male, he doesn’t do touch very well and is often exposed when meeting his European counterparts – he doesn’t know what cheek to kiss, whether to embrace, how many kisses to give or indeed if he should just shake hands.  We need to live in the moment and be able to adapt, but something in our head stops us living in the moment. We need to think about looked after children who don’t get cuddles and kisses. Some children are Looked After earlier in their development - not just ten hours in a nursery but maybe 10 years in care. Imagine never being touched when being looked after by professionals, never getting kisses and cuddles or being tickled?   We know that kangaroo care – a technique used with preterm babies who are hugged by their parents and given skin-to-skin care out of plastic incubators thrive and do better than those in incubators. There has been positive media interest in this topic.  The time and place to have a sensible conversation might just be now – this debate might just be happening at the right time.  We know we are not in a place where we want to be, so we need to talk about it, touch is part of children's nurturing needs.

There were so many conversations in the room; our European pedagogues in the room were slightly alarmed by the reserved nature and even anxiety around touching children in Scotland.  Some of us remembered the horror of the Edinburgh Enquiry to find out trusted members of staff had abused children in our care and foster carers in the room shared that they “broke the rules” regarding touch.  Some of us were just relieved the discussion was being had.  We know that some adults harm children and we must always be vigilant to adults intent on harm but we also need to continue our conversation about how we care and nurture Scotland’s children and young people and whether or not touch should be an expectation in that nurture?

Catriona Grant
Employee Development Officer (Child Protection)

Some references from the day

Mark and Laura both mentioned Heather Piper....
Piper, H and Stronach, I (2008), Don’t Touch! The Educational Story of a Panic, London, Routledge

Laura also mentioned Tiffany Field, an academic from Miami who is the founder of the Touch Therapy Institute. Here is a link to the website: http://www6.miami.edu/touch-research 

Follow this link to a research paper by Field on ‘relational touch’ http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/respapers/Summerhill.php

Field has also has written a book called ‘Touch’. Some of the research Laura was quoting is in this book.
Field, T (2003), Touch, Bradford Books.

You can also listen to a podcast of Laura Steckley talking about touch (and containment theory) at the Scottish Attachment In Action 2011 Conference
http://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/saia-2011-why-attachment-matters-please-touch-laura-steckley-part-1
http://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/saia-2011-why-attachment-matters-please-touch-laura-steckley-part-2

Emporium of Dangerous Ideas

And so the finale to the 'festival' arrived with the Emporium of Dangerous Ideas. This event was about sharing the initial discoveries of the festival and an opportunity for merchants to persuade participants with their dangerous ideas.

David Cameron introduced the event and reminded participants that this was an opportunity to challenge ourselves, and our way of  regarding education. 

Karen Lawson gave an overview of the festival achievements so far 30 events, almost half delivered by partner orgnaisations. over 1000 people attending from Thurso to Ayr and 3 college regions deliver events as part of their merger strategy.  Karen also gave an overview of some of the major themes arising from festival events so far:

1. Without Walls: both metaphorical and physical walls that constrain how we provide learning opportunities.  This could be outdoor learning, gaming and also the walls we create that restrict our thinking and ability to be creative in practice.
2. The focus on employability and essential skills - should we now be focussing on the skills young people need to be employers, to be able to create, innovate and manage  their lives.
3. The need for youth work skills training for all teachers and lecturers - how to engage with young people and keep the passion for young people's potential alive.
4. What success and failure mean, and an assessment system and assessment criteria that limit learning.
5. Our own personal and professional power to take risks, try out new ideas - not waiting for permission, but also the type of leadership that builds on peoples capacity to innovate.

 Gillian Hunt from  City of Edinburgh Council and Diarmuid McAuliffe for UWS gave overviews of their events and why they had become involved in the festival.  Gillian talked openly about the taboo subject of touching children and the interest that the event had created, while Diarnuid discussed the intervention of walking, drawing and extending sites of learning as necessary to counteract learning in isolation and in silos.

We had two rounds of dynamic trading from a very mixed group of merchants (see Merchant's Guide) and photos who persuaded and exchanged ideas for dangerous dollars.

The winners from the Merchants were Sense over Sectarinism, Rownbank Environment Education
and Angus College.

One of the highlights of this year's festival was A Walk On the Wildside and Creative leaders for the walk, Paul Gorman gave a challenging account of what was dangerous about the walk and challenged us as participants to think differently and creatively., while Matthew Sowerby shared  his first attempts at making a film about the walk  - See Walk On the Wildside  blog for further Information.

The finale to the day at the Emporium came with the auction of dangerous ideas:

1.    I'm no doing nothin for nothin - student volunteers. 39/42 volunteered. If you perform so well doing something for nothing imagine how good you'll be when you're paid

2.    People can get stuck in their old ways - put into action in self-directed support

3.    Ideas go - platform for your ideas and place to ask for resources. Can put ideas in by categories, use a map.  Could be a collaborative process. Flexible tool.

4.    F... the Timetable Friday (FTTF)- children enter primary as the most excited and creative beings. By time they leave school/college we've kicked that out if them. We're still preparing children for the 18th century.  Trust lecturers, don't give schedule, give time and space.

5.    Inter generational change - we're headed for an inter generational conflict. Middle generation hold the power - it should be the young and old who make the decisions together, take the risks.

6.    College? - free app called strava (?)  Record a journey as you're on it. Physical and internal journey.

7.    Imagination gyms - a workout for the mind. Look for innovation and enterprise but we don't work our imagination to enable us to do it.  15 minute workouts built in to the curriculum.

8.    Pilot your own spaceship - you've got to believe in young people for them to believe in themselves. Imagine and pilot the spaceship. Imagine outside of the ordinary. A spaceship designed for what you are about. Creative skills, imagination.   

9.    Coursemaster - we currently have hugely difficult system to get people into college. Like ticketmaster

10. Gardening - invite retired people to work with children on allotments. Young and old.

11. The answer to good experiences - he has the answer but he needs the dollars to reveal it.

The winners were FTTF and using the Strava App. 

The Emporium was an excellent event for rounding off what had been a dynamic festival, where not only had there been plenty of ideas generated, but also a willingness and energy for putting ideas into practice.