TREES

 Hope is a fragile thing, like this tree. When I planted a tree in December, my mother said, 'you should pre-dig the holes when you do tree planting with the children, otherwise it will take too long'.  I profoundly disagreed with her. But to give the children that task required a leap of faith.  The whole point of the 'Voices of the Future' project is that we have the faith that the children can dig the holes for the trees. They might be smaller and are light so the pushing part was hard and they might not like the worms and the bugs and the soil that cracks in their hands, but they could plant the trees.  Each tree will live longer than each child, if it is lucky, and the tree will provide some goodness back to the air.  So the success of the tree project is partly in that simple act, that would only have happened in the context of the project. It is also in the way that the science has now become our mode - placing science as mode at the heart of the tree pro...

 At the discussion on Friday, which I listened to with a kind of Covid-y tiredness but couldn't help but find exciting, we discussed the energy of hope. We spent some time reading the transcripts from the children's listening exercise. Johan talked about the format of the fairytale as one we could follow.  He talked about Hansel and Gretel and the form of the fairytale being about overcoming some kind of danger and going into strange spaces such as the forest. We also talked about small stories and tall stories.  This felt like a really positive way forward and we agreed to explore tall and small stories with the children.  While I have been ill I made it my mantra to walk in the woods everyday.  Here is a photo from a tree walk. 

  I think that the trees project is gaining an inertia as all the different parts start off and move forward.  Trees do grow quite slowly though and unlike the seasons that seem to come around so quickly and surprise us trees seem to have a different relationship to time.  On radio four this week someone said an oak tree takes 300 years to reach maturity then 300 years to reach old age and 300 years too die.  I am not sure how true this is but it does make you think about who has stood in an oak trees shade.  I am thinking about the art seminar lab session and wondered if it would be good to introduce some of Giuseppe Penone's work.  Its probably some of the most poetic sculpture about trees I can think of and also says a lot about growth and time.  I think the practice helps to make visible in an affective way things that we know but don't really know.  The time held in the center of a tree although quite formal in many ways there is a simplicity...

 I have been lucky enough to have lots of thinking spaces on the Tree project recently.  Here is a note of some of them: 1. Data analysis day. Last Friday, the Finding the Curriculum in the Trees team spent time looking at the audio and drawings the children from the Primary School  made. We were really interested in the embodied funds of knowledge in the drawings and how the children re-imagined the way the field could look, with bees, insects rivers and trees all entangled in a new landscape.  2. The Critical Discussion Lab on Co-production was great. I loved how respectful people were. Co-production is best seen as a utopian stance - it enables a re-framing of knowledge, but as you said, it is not a toolkit or a how to. I loved listening to it.  3. Race, migration and identity. Yesterday we had a session on race, migration and identity - here are some of our notes. Manchester City of Trees came and the Chartered College of Teaching person and it was a really ...