My first afternoon session today at ALA Midwinter Meeting 2017 was run by two people from Avon Public Library in Connecticut, \u201cThe Creative Edge: How One Small Library Is Leading the Way in Creative Arts Programming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary Fletcher\u2019s official title is Creativity Specialist.\u00a0 She has been in charge of a program where they have brought the arts into the library.<\/p>\n
Arts are not crafts.\u00a0 Art is an open-ended process.\u00a0 Art has no planned product.\u00a0 Art is open-ended.\u00a0 Art has no adult sample to copy.\u00a0 Art can be spontaneous.<\/p>\n
A pre-planned craft can discourage creative choices.<\/p>\n
The presenters showed us many pictures from their Open Art Studio.\u00a0 I liked the image of a wall covered with buildings made of paper.\u00a0 No two buildings are exactly alike.\u00a0 Together, they form a wonderfully diverse town.<\/p>\n
I was writing furiously.\u00a0 I\u2019ll include some good nuggets below:<\/p>\n
Art is guided by the child\u2019s choices.<\/p>\n
When children are fascinated, they make amazing things.<\/p>\n
We encourage exploration without imposing our ideas.<\/p>\n
When self-motivated, kids will persist despite difficulties.<\/p>\n
In their Open Art Studio, frustration is rare.\u00a0 They gain self-confidence and self-reliance.<\/p>\n
Creativity is intelligence having fun.\u00a0 In the future creativity will be needed more and more.<\/p>\n
Creative confidence hits a slump around 4th grade, when kids start wanting to conform.\u00a0 Creativity must be nurtured to survive.<\/p>\n
Open-ended art encourages imaginative play and storytelling.<\/p>\n
Scribbling is to writing as babbling is to speaking.\u00a0 With art, the library can support early writing as well as early reading.<\/p>\n
A table anywhere will work, even if you don\u2019t have the budget for a dedicated space!<\/p>\n
The beauty of a library is that it\u2019s not a school.\u00a0 They will learn, but it\u2019s child-guided exploration.\u00a0 We can encourage imaginative tangents.\u00a0 Facilitators are intentionally quiet and unobtrusive.<\/p>\n
Facilitators get to serve at the banquet!\u00a0 They provide materials designed to encourage experimentation.<\/p>\n
They also encourage art through movement, and have hosted three Family Dances at the library.<\/p>\n
They do a reading buddies program pairing teens with young children and spending a half-hour reading and a half-hour doing art together.<\/p>\n
The program inspired me.\u00a0 Though we may not be able to have an actual studio open all the time, it made me think about having more programs involving open-ended art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My first afternoon session today at ALA Midwinter Meeting 2017 was run by two people from Avon Public Library in Connecticut, \u201cThe Creative Edge: How One Small Library Is Leading the Way in Creative Arts Programming.\u201d Mary Fletcher\u2019s official title is Creativity Specialist.\u00a0 She has been in charge of a program where they have brought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,196],"tags":[384],"class_list":["post-32405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference-corner","category-librarians-help","tag-alamw17"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}