Why? For the rights of children, the rights of families, the rights of people, teachers, staff, and others who work beside children and families, to experience the best possible education experience every day of their lives.
On listening: Carlina Rinaldi knew what she was writing about, thank you for your beautiful words that express how complex and difficult the act of listening is. The children’s words, and whisperings captured by staff in audio recordings and made available to visitors through a QR code scanning device, were for me magical. Each one was more interesting, and wonderful, than the one before. I absolutely loved the introduction on the panel that educators wrote to set the scene, and then the recording of the children’s voices was the wonderful culmination of each panel’s story. The educator’s narratives in the documentation were respectful and descriptive, aptly setting the stage, but not once did the narrative intrude on the beauty of the moment; there was no voice-of-an-adult standing above or outside the moment trying to TELL what was happening for the child. No, “here’s what the child was probably thinking” or, “perhaps the child was learning to…
The narrative, and the child’s or children’s voices, and sometimes the voices of the teachers and carers, are captured in this installation to become a work of art, a work that takes the participant to a new place altogether, a new place of quiet, a new place receptive to the act of listening, a new place of appreciation and love, a new place to appreciate the wonder of coming together with loved friends in the centre of this catastrophic pandemic.
The Gift of Togetherness: 