'We're a little bit lost aren't we?': outdoor exploration, real and fantastical lands, and the educational possibilities of disorientation
FORUM - ISSN 0963-8253
Volume 56 Number 1 (2014)
'We're a little bit lost aren't we?': outdoor exploration, real and fantastical lands, and the educational possibilities of disorientation
DEB WILENSKI pages 9-18
DOI: 10.2304/forum.2014.56.1.9
Abstract
This article advocates an approach to outdoor exploration that begins by welcoming the unknown and quite possibly disorientating aspects of wild places. It proposes that one of the major ways in which young children make lasting connections with landscape is through imagination and the power of invention, and argues for the rights of children to experience two fundamental freedoms in the wild outdoors - physical freedom to adventure into the land, and freedom of the imagination, to make cultural meaning from their experience. The project described here took place in spring 2013, and was a ten-week collaboration between Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination (CCI) and Ruby Class (Reception) from Cromwell Park Primary School in Huntingdon. Two CCI creative practitioners, Deb Wilenski and Caroline Wendling, worked with thirty children, their teacher Ben Wilson, and assistants Karen Lewin and Kelly Smith. They spent each Monday morning in Hinchingbrooke Country Park, and in the afternoon returned to school to continue their explorations.
To cite this article
DEB WILENSKI (2014) 'We're a little bit lost aren't we?': outdoor exploration, real and fantastical lands, and the educational possibilities of disorientation, FORUM, 56(1), 9-18. https://doi.org/10.2304/forum.2014.56.1.9