Personal creative literacy
A lifetime of investment - the autumn of my life.
Welcome to my wee corner of Substack. I am a seasonal artist living on the Isle of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland. I am the custodian of approximately two acres of land that includes a woodland, a meadow and my wee garden. I offer a seasonal book arts project for paid subscribers if you are interested and you can read more about that HERE. Grab a cuppa and lets delve into our relationship with the shifting seasons….
My school days were not much fun. There was a strong emphasis on what teachers saw as ‘academic’ subjects with the arts being pushed further and further into a tiny box. My experience of art was to copy the masters (badly) or paint yet another still life. For my GCE project (at 16) I created a series of ink slides with that also contained pva and water. As I showed the slides of the plants and trees I had drawn the glue heated and the images began to move. They looked like they were dancing on the screen. I loved it and thought it was a triumph. My teacher did not and I passed with a low grade. It was, however, the start of a life long interest in movement in art.
Fast track a good number of years and three of my four children were at school and the arts was now in an even smaller box especially for my daughter who was at the high school. This was just one of the issues I had with traditional schooling but it was important. The most important was that their education seemed to be happening within four walls, rarely leaving their classroom. After some very serious consideration we offered the children the chance to be educated within the family context. That began a new chapter of all our lives and right in the centre of it was a commitment to educating outside and creative literacy.
I am not going to gloss over this decision. It was really hard work to make it and was not popular with friends, families and anyone else who wanted to share their view. At this time in the UK very few families took up the challenge of educating their own children but we promised the children to give it our best shot and review in a year. We never looked back. Within weeks the children were jumping out of bed with an investigation to finish from the day before. They were often found at the washing machine popping yet more muddy clothes in to be cleaned. Their curiosity reached new and exciting heights and they were proud owners of nature journals. Subjects that had seemed difficult were getting easier and all anxious thoughts had disappeared - they were thriving.
Their beloved nature journals became the spine of their education. We jumped off them to complete a science investigation or calculate a maths problem. We used them as sources for literacy and these wee books fuelled their imagination. Drawing what they saw in the natural world became as easy as breathing in and out and once we introduced more complex aspects of creative literacy such as design they took up the challenge with enthusiasm and self-belief.
Creative literacy is such an important body of knowledge and skills and is one of the areas that truly sits well with life long study. You only have to visit the online teaching platforms to see how many creative classes are out there to see the popularity. In fact, it is quite overwhelming. I believe creative literacy to be a deeply personal journey that we are capable of taking control of ourselves. In this quest it is helpful to have something at the centre of our creative literacy that speaks deeply to us. That might be a music composition book, a writing journal, a sketchbook, a nature journal or something else entirely. Whatever it is, it is the thing that holds your creative literacy together. It allows you to have a focal point and it provides a space for personal experimentation and play.
I studied alongside my children throughout their education and our nature journals were what identified us and our unique take on the world. However, my first love was my art journal which I used to work on in quiet moments when they were off on an adventure with their father. Over the years my art journal has become my creative rudder. It has strenghthened so many creative literacy skills and strenghtened my own unique artistic voice. I do keep a sketchbook but that is more of a field notebook for when out and about and has its roots in our home education nature journals. I wonder if you have something at the centre of your practice? How does it help you?
My art journal pages give me time and space to figure things out. They allow me to consider design ideas for new work and experiment with colour palettes. They allow me to work across a range of media which, in turn, encourages experimentation. As pages, they give me fodder to look back on and consider new thinking while reflecting on where I might take the page now. My art practice is deeply embedded in the seasons so I can see what was going on spring last year and how it made me feel. However, beyond all of that, my art journals are something that link me to the creative being within and that is incredibly powerful. If I decide to skip an art journal page and dive straight into designing a new collection I always regret it. I quickly become stuck feeling like their are just too many directions to follow. It then all comes tumbling down…..
What happened to the children? They all went off in their own, very different directions. Two went to university, two went straight into the work environment. My daughter,
had a successful career in conservation before leaving to become a full time writer and film maker. My eldest son trained ‘on the tools’ as a plasterer and became self employed at the age of 21 and now juggles that with travelling the world. My next son went on to study outdoor education and now works around the world as an outdoor instructor. My youngest works in a cafe on the island part time and has an investment portfolio which has allowed him to travel to places like Japan and linger.Did their creative literacy support them in their choices. I think it did. What binds them together is an ability to think outside the box and carve a life that appeals to them rather than being influenced by others. All of them are first class problem solvers and all of them know what inspires them and what doesn’t. One of the much talked about outcomes of home education is self motivation and they all have that and super work ethics.
What happened to me? I miss home education and I miss the children but I am also incredibly proud of them. I am pleased we made the decision we did and would make it again in a heartbeat. It took me some time to learn to focus just on my own creative literacy but my art journal saw me through the early days and into an exhibiting artist and teacher.
What happened to the ‘moving sides?’
Eventually they disintegrated but not before I had watched them time and time again. Every time I watched I still thought they were a triumph. I could see the originality and I loved the movement. I had been dancing for 6 years when I first showed them to that unappreciative audience. I continued to dance and began a choreographer’s notebook going on to university to study dance. My career took me into teaching and eventually lecturing in dance and performing arts.
As I prepared for an important inspection of our university offering those slides came back to me. I dug them out, borrowed my parents old slide machine and booked a screen. I spoke to the students for a whole hour, barely taking a breath, all about the importance of creative literacy and showed them my slides. The students then broke into small groups to discuss their own creative literacy stories and map a route forward for themselves. I had forgotten all about the inspector. As the session came to a close the students left and I began to pack away my slides. The inspector came towards me and looked slightly flustered. That awful feeling of dread washed over me. I need not have worried. She just wanted to talk to me about the slides and what prompted me to make them. We grabbed a cuppa and chatted away about creative literacy and she shared that hers was badly neglected. She had a 7 year old daugher so I gave her one of my slides and she smiled before saying ‘just for the record, I would have awarded you an A for that submission back in the day.’ I smiled and thanked her but inside my head I said, ‘how kind but no need as I had already awarded myself an A’.
We kept in touch for some years after that meeting and swapped notes on different ways to record personal creative literacy journeys. We had the idea to write an academic paper about it but I left that career and moved to a small scottish island and you know the rest of the story. My creative literacy journey is punctured my incredible memories like that and I am grateful for each and every one of them. I might be in the autumn of my life now but I still invest heavily in my creative literacy because we never stop learning and I really wouldn’t want to, would you?
Until next time, Fiona x
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Such a wonderful read ✨🌿 I was lucky to go to schools where although the arts subjects were being squeezed, they were valued as part of the wider life of the school community. That said, the teaching and content of the lessons themselves was very traditional, academic if you like, with little room for creativity and personal expression. I think Mum would have liked to have home-educated, but Dad wasn’t keen because like most things in life, in his risk-averse way, he was worried about what everyone would think.
Gosh your posts are so thought provoking and I’m sure we all have some similarities we can reflect on. I love your honesty. You have done amazing as have your children. Thank you x