Who we are and what we are doing
Sitting in a museum cafeteria in midtown, we were faced with an enormous wall covered in black paint.
We were drawn to have our fourth curriculum lab meeting in a museum so we could be inspired. So that artwork and images and sound could prompt an unusual conversation about ideas and places and even our own backgrounds and memories. It did just that, and as we sat to debrief our experience, the black paint seemed to be an open surface awaiting reply. It both absorbed and contained our ideas, and just as easily allowed the canvas to be wiped clean to start anew with a fresh conversation.
Black paint seemed an apt metaphor for the challenging discussions we wanted to have about education and curriculum. In this project, we wish to engage a wider audience in different kinds of conversation about designing curriculum. We share an interest in public spaces, where knowledge occurs but in unplanned and open ways. The outcomes are less rigid and therefore the path to learning is more open. Black paint has the quality to evoke this mystery, this sense of uncertainty. There is an invitation to layer meanings and change perspectives on what we think we are talking about or seeing.
We were drawn to have our fourth curriculum lab meeting in a museum so we could be inspired. So that artwork and images and sound could prompt an unusual conversation about ideas and places and even our own backgrounds and memories. It did just that, and as we sat to debrief our experience, the black paint seemed to be an open surface awaiting reply. It both absorbed and contained our ideas, and just as easily allowed the canvas to be wiped clean to start anew with a fresh conversation.
Black paint seemed an apt metaphor for the challenging discussions we wanted to have about education and curriculum. In this project, we wish to engage a wider audience in different kinds of conversation about designing curriculum. We share an interest in public spaces, where knowledge occurs but in unplanned and open ways. The outcomes are less rigid and therefore the path to learning is more open. Black paint has the quality to evoke this mystery, this sense of uncertainty. There is an invitation to layer meanings and change perspectives on what we think we are talking about or seeing.