Give Children Space and Time to Dream Up Creative Stories, says Lauren Child
Creativity needs time and space to let minds roam, says TR&W guest editor, Lauren Child…
- by Lauren Child
Before I accepted the role of Children’s Laureate, I thought long and hard. I felt that I wanted to take it on, and of course I was immensely flattered to be asked, but I knew that I could only do justice to it if I had definite aims for my time in the position, aims that really mattered to me. Eventually, I settled on three themes, each of which is, I think, as relevant in the classroom as out of it.
My sense is that visual literacy is often skirted over in education, but I’m passionate about its importance. Each of us is born with an incredible ability to ‘read’ the expressions of other humans – we aren’t even aware we’re doing it, but it is, or was, a critical part of our survival and development in the early years.
As we grow older, we learn to read landscapes with great subtlety, again mainly at the subconscious level. And as part of this, we all respond emotionally to the visual world, whether we are aware of doing so or not.
However, as children get older, society tends to place more and more emphasis on the written word, and so send the message that the visual is secondary at best. Picture books are for toddlers; once you can read ‘properly’, you will be old enough to leave them behind and concentrate on text.
There are no illustrations in Shakespeare even though they are plays with costumes, settings and props. As the daughter of an art teacher, I find this incomprehensible and frustrating.
We can learn so much from images, including illustration, and I would love to see the visual arts given the academic status they deserve. High quality picture books are a fantastic teaching resource for pupils of all ages, whether using one of the many beautiful examples published in the last few years, or one of the established, timeless classics.
Everyone included
The second issue that I’ve been trying to address as Laureate is inclusivity. We need books for everyone; stories and illustrations in which children from all backgrounds can recognise themselves.
I have been conscious for a long time of just how little diversity there is in picture books, as well as in films and on TV. The acceptance of that has always worried me. While my work has always included characters who look different from me, they were rarely at the heart of the story.
The New Small Person was the first book I wrote and illustrated in which the family featured happens to be black. Their skin colour is irrelevant to the plot; it’s just who they are.
Whilst I admire writers who use literature to address issues of diversity, we all need to get far past the point where diversity in characters tends to occur when it is part of the plot.
Ezra Jack Keats understood this back in the 60s – a New Yorker of Polish-Jewish descent, simply representing what he saw around him on the Brooklyn streets; it’s definitely worth looking up his books if you’re not already familiar with them.
Time to drift
Last is Staring Into Space. The idea came to me when I was thinking about a question which people in my job get asked all the time: where do you get your ideas from?
I used to answer: childhood memories, things I notice when I’m walking down the street, conversations with friends, with strangers, conversations overheard, books I’ve read or old TV shows I’ve watched, things I’ve seen when looking up, looking down or looking out of the window, but I’ve come to realise that this doesn’t get to the heart of it.
Really, my ideas come from those moments when my mind is ‘drifting’, and my brain starts putting together random thoughts. It’s the collision of these thoughts that makes the idea and transforms a memory, a chance sighting, a found object, into a story or a picture.
Creativity may well be found in what we often dismiss as ‘daydreaming’ and, crucially, it’s something that everyone can do. However, we do need to allow ourselves the time for it, to put aside those things which give us an escape from our own thoughts. We need to risk failure, and to endure and overcome boredom.
So, I want to promote more ‘staring into space’, including at school. That doesn’t mean that teachers should plan in daily sessions of ‘enforced mind-wandering’, but rather that we should encourage pupils to take time away from their devices and their desks, to notice small details around them as they walk or travel to and from school, and to start conversations about the things they see.
It’s amazing what we can come up with when we allow our minds to drift, and float, and be playful – and when we decide we don’t have to be ‘busy’.
Find out more about Staring Into Space at staringintospace.me, and download a full set of brilliant Staring Into Space classroom resources, created by Lauren with talented teacher Josey Scullard for BookTrust, at teachwire.net/staring-into-space.
