Signs from children
Doors to Signs
Examples
Nature is a Topic, with multiple Signs!
Can be it useful to put here some of them, to address to a set of possibilities, a variety of points of view and different readings? That can maybe help us to begin to put together the material for new jobs to do. Raw stuff at the beginning, but taken from our shared activities rather than always from the work of "others", the videos and images and information from "alien" catalogues which so often fill our imagination and hinders the communication with our own experience.
Here around are some pictures from a big project in kindergarten, Brescia, Italy 1988, with many children engaged about River, Horse, Nature in Town and Marshland. Pictures with titles and graphics are from an old VHS video and a "home" computer with digitizing and superimpose capabilities. The drawing shows kids and an adult with a camera inside a very full marsh environment - strong experience - overflown by a cuckoo!
The quality of the videos above is poor not so much because of the original VHS, but because when they were uploaded on YouTube, only 240 dpi were supported. We could put them somewhere else, but this is not so important. Even watched today, in many respects they are "new" and unexpected. We could talk and think about it!
Il Fiume (The River) is the first part of a larger video on the quoted experience in 1988. I bambini e l'ambiente (Children and Environment) is from a project of 1997, including also primary school in different town of Lombardy, northern Italy.
After 2 years of work and many classes of primary and kindergarten school of Brescia having been exploring the parks of the city, they left their signs, words, videos, photos, texts in a CD ROM, produced by the Municipality, with Coop Lombardia.
Going into a urban park with a camera can mean an adventure, and kids choose what to show for their own "television". Later, in school, they watch and remember the experience.
During the short and intense season of Bambini Oggi Mompiano, 2011 - 2012, Paolo Beneventi, who also deals with children and insects, taking a cue from Kristin Brenneman Eno, edited these pictures of Monarch butterflies brought by a member of the cooperative that hosted us, asking the children to tell them. And the children, with their voices and their presence, made the thing their own.
Macro photographs of small animals discovered by children are shown in a true exhibition, open to the public. It is important for children to see that their work does not always and only end in a school exercise: they know that they can actually be producers of information!
This DVD was sponsored by ARPAV, the agency for environment of Veneto Region, Italy, 2014. Paolo Beneventi was in 21 kindergarten and primary school to make a video from the work of kids on environmental education more in general.
Beyond the clichés about child drawing, this is what happens for example to 6 year old kids when they work on the basis of an intense direct experience, possibly amplified by the active use of video and photography.
The Chidren's Virtual Museum of Small Animals
It is a project by Paolo Beneventi, many times started and stopped during the years. This two videos are from Brescia, Italy, 2014 and 2006, with children of primary school and kindergarten.
A locust on the wall. Watching the video, the kids explain it with spontaneous commentaries. Brescia - San Daniele Po (Cremona), Italy, 2013.