Master Class: Learning in the Wild (Spring 2021)
(I have provided no visuals this time, but I hope some begin to appear in your mind as you read…)
In this learning adventure, we leave the confines of our safe neighbourhood and venture into the wild, coming back transformed. Holding hands we embark on an exploration, moving through liminal spaces towards the edges, the periphery. What each of you finds on this journey will be subjective—unique to your voice, perspective, situation, intention and skillset. You will create your own path by walking.
In order to design this master class, I have dug deep during the last 6 months, pulling from my own long & wide experience, the experiences of my vast network and my own intuition of emerging untapped possibilities. Since the pandemic, we have rightfully had our heads down, working hard dealing with “What now?”—but we need to look up and out into the horizon, reflecting in action on “What if and what next?”
At the centre of this master class is the concept of bricolage: it will anchor our thinking & doing.
Bricolage is French and means the process of improvisation in a human endeavour.
In art & literature, bricolage is creation from diverse materials available or on hand. It has been likened to the concepts of curating, intertextuality, remixture, reconstruction, and reuse of separate materials or artefacts to produce new meanings and insights. In anthropology, Claude Lévis Strauss invoked the concept of social bricolage to examine how societies create new solutions by using resources that already exist in the collective social consciousness. Social psychology builds on that with the concept of psychological bricolage, used to explain the mental processes of an individual developing novel solutions to problems by using previously unrelated knowledge or ideas they already possess. In cultural studies, bricolage is used to describe the processes of people acquiring objects from across social divisions to create new cultural identities. As in subcultures, where objects that possess one meaning (or no meaning) in the dominant culture are acquired and given a new, often subversive meaning. In education, Seymour Papert sees bricolage as a way to learn and solve problems by trying, testing, playing around. In Joe Kincheloe & Sherry Steinberg’s concept of research bricolage, diverse theoretical traditions are used in a broader critical pedagogical context to lay the foundation for a transformative mode of multimethodological inquiry.
(See Wikipedia as a starting place for more sources to explore Bricolage)
I hope I didn’t lose you, but started you thinking…what will you learn if you venture out into the wild with others: what do you already have access to in inside you (your life/work experience, your interests, your untapped skills), in your backpack (your tools, equipment, provisions) and around you (in your home, immediate surroundings, online) that you uniquely could use to produce new meanings, insights, novel solutions, innovations and representations of emerging identities or concepts. What is emerging and will emerge?
At moments we will have our head in the clouds, reflecting and dreaming together:
I will openly share my thinking and sensing with the intention to stimulate & open up yours
We will read & create visuals based on short extracts & form dialogue circles to include diverse perspectives to inform our practice
We will use creative cocoaching, to flesh out and align our dreams and goals with our intentions & actions
We will tap into the wisdom & experience of our co-adventurers throughout to lead some legs of our journey
We will venture outside of visual practice & invite other adventurous souls to drop in from: applied theatre, improvisation, embodied practice, design, etc, in order to disrupt our practice and develop our future-back thinking
Alternatively, we will plant our feet firmly in the ground, design, create, apply and implement.
We will use diverse technologies in novel ways & engage in guided practice on different platforms: examining real client cases, engaging in design challenges and push each other to explore untapped possibilities (ex. using platforms in original ways, rethinking live/studio work, <live> data visualisation, AR, <stop motion> animation, etc.)
You will go to the edges and dig deep inside yourself, your backpack & your surroundings in a series of, what I like to call, virtual MacGyver-challenges (MacGyver being a Master Bricoleur!)
Working online does not mean working solely with digital tools, so we will explore the tacit, analogue & blended methods to create OFUs (Objects Furthering Understanding)
In addition, each participant will be supported & coached to complete a concrete project of their own choice in the 10-week period and use this class to support their ongoing personal/client work
What will be the outcome?
You will have a portfolio of your process and tools to further understanding in virtual, hybrid and on-site meetings and beyond
You will be able to MacGyver-it in challenging virtual working conditions, finding new ways of working (and plans a, b, c,…and y)
You will have been supported and held accountable by your co-adventurers to complete a personal/client/business project
You will have further developed your future-back thinking and found your own way of navigating forward
You will be part of a self-organising community of adventurers you can call on to swarm around a skill or tool you want to learn or test in the wild
The transformation you undergo on this journey will be subjective—unique to your voice, perspective, situation, intention and skillset. You will create your own path by walking. And find a new direction to keep on walking once our journey is at an end.
When & where will we meet?
Unfortunately, we cannot meet onsite in the lush forests or by the beautiful lakes here in Finland just yet, but we can use all of the online & offline possibilities we have to connect & challenge ourselves. Deep learning & transformation takes time. That is why this class meets once a week for 10 weeks every Tuesday for 3 hours starting March 23rd-May 25th from 19-22 Helsinki time. As the light in the north increases, so will our learning.
The Cost:
1500€* (pay in 3 / 5 instalments once a month)**
1200€* (pay in one go) or (alumni price, pay in one go or in 3 / 4 instalments once a month)**
* No coupon codes or reductions are applicable for this class
**If you are based in Europe and do not have a VAT number, I will have to add 24%VAT according to the law (otherwise it will be reverse charge)
These are challenging times, so if you need a longer payment plan, let’s talk❤️
Includes:
Live & highly interactive classes with a limited amount of participants
Access to curated & created material (for however long you need it and I can find a way to keep it online)
Documentation of classes & recordings of classes (always when possible and makes sense)
Life long adventureship with me ❤️
Ready to put one foot in front of the other, take my hand and take off into the wild?
I’ve got your back. We’ve got each other.
We can see the sun coming up over the horizon. It’s time.
I know you’ve got it in you.