Rebecca McGuire-Snieckus
Children, teachers and families experience Forest of Imagination
Posted on August 12, 2022
Forest of Imagination is a creative partnership (now in its 10th year) between House of Imagination, Bath Spa University, Grant Associates and Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios working alongside the creative, cultural and educational community of Bath. Each year the team re-imagines a familiar space in the city to highlight the importance of nature and imagination in all of our lives.
This summer we co-designed a Living Tree Mirror Maze in the egg theatre with Berlin based artist and filmmaker Andrew Amondson, Professor Alf Coles, University of Bristol and Marcus Rothnie, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.
We invited children to imagine a forest…a living tree mirror maze. We followed the children’s fascinations and invited them to experience the forest of imagination in person to see their ideas come alive. This research and development phase in designing our creative installations invited opportunities for self-directed inquiry and the agency for action and hope in response to the climate emergency. We designed an integrated creative learning programme for schools and families with playful installations that transformed the egg theatre with spaces for imagination and inquiry.
Children and teachers from St Andrew’s Primary School Bath were involved in the research and development phase – this beautiful film shares the process of their co-enquiry and their subsequent visit to the creative installation at the egg theatre. 16 classes of children and young people from 10 local schools visited over 2 weeks and over 800 children with their families during 2 weekends.
If you are keen to get involved in Forest of Imagination (students and staff all welcome), please contact Dr Penny Hay p.hay@bathspa.ac.uk
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