G.K.Chesterton wrote “at the back of our brains, so to speak, there is a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.”

I felt that school was stifling and divisive where only productivity not creativity was valued… so going against the grain twenty years ago, I took my children out of school in their formative years, to experience an organic knowledge exchange keeping the innate sense of wonder alive. I wanted them to sense, to make and know beauty and love and to embody our connection to both the material and immaterial. It is what makes us human and balances the irrational with the rational creating empathy and a sense of well being.

When a baby enters the world, the first act is that of drawing in air followed by the involuntary release of an equal amount of air that is chemically different but of equal value.There is an understanding that an exchange of sort is always taking place, some equal and other times not so equal. It is a conscious effort to be learning and processing in order to give back in some capacity whether directly or indirectly to the human or more than world. It’s difficult to define boundaries between art/creativity and a way of life, whether planting trees in a formal setting collectively as a living memorial or individually in a private garden, it is nevertheless less knowledge exchange as well as professional practice.

According to Blaise Pascal,‘imagination’s the dominant faculty in humans, reason never wholly overcomes imagination, while the contrary is quite common.’ capturing the imagination means capturing the person and so comes with a heavy responsibility. Humans have forever created beauty and horror, desire and revulsion, fear and fascination, pressing some and elevating other. The subtle but severe wounds inflicted by colonising the collective mind have left individuals unable to imagine better futures for themselves. The educational system being a means of maintaining imperial order.

Martha Nusbaum’s Capabilities, Audre Lorde and bell hooks together with Pedagogy of the oppressed all echo similar sentiments, that the the ability to think is a fundamental human right, to be able to think one must also have an imagination which is fuelled by creativity and in turn fuels more creativity.

If the goal is efficiency rather than effectiveness and accountability rather than trust how do we move forward when every student would ‘ve suffered some degree of trauma by just being in the education system from a young age?