Learning Unit “Deconstructing the Wild <> Child”, about the connection of “Primitivism” in Modern Art, the development of “child art” and “child creativity”, the racist construction of “the Other” in these approaches and its traces in current art education practices, approaches and terms. Text by Carla Bobadilla, Andrea Hubin, Karin Schneider Introduction The Learning Unit of the Viennese working group aims to understand if the history of the construction of “fantasy” and “creativity” as related to the “exotic” other still informs current methods and ideas of museum, gallery and art education practices (not only) for children – and if so, how these connection-points work. We propose to look at parts of this history through our own experiences of and ideas on art education for children. The figure of “the child” as innocent, in need for guidance and protection with an embedded potential of fantasy and creativity that should not be spoiled by “Civilization” is in itself a construction that underpins the concepts of child-art of the 19th and 20th century and still might unconsciously inform our own ideas and approaches. In the construction of the Learning Unit we started with our own path to art education and experiences in this field (as artists, art historians, activists coming from different social, geographical and professional backgrounds) and followed some of the hints back into the history of the development of child art, avant-garde art and the construction of “the other” in Vienna of the late 19th century to the 1930s of the 20th century. A key figure that crossed our path several times is the artist and art educator Franz Cizek, one of the inventors of “Child Art”1, in the context of the Secession movement in Vienna: “(…) Franz Cizek was born in 1865 in the town of Leitmeritz, in the former Austria. After his studies, he moved to Vienna, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1885. At this time young artists were responding to the impressionist movement and began to withdraw from the established exhibitions and societies all over Europe. The art nouveau movement arrived in Vienna, where it took a decidedly Austrian direction. Cizek became a member of the “Secession” in Vienna, a group of progressive artists who were looking for new expressions of form in art. Nineteen artists, including Klimt, Olbrich, Moser, and Otto Wagner, organized the group in 1897. (...) Cizek’s insistence at recognizing the creativity in children led him to develop his method of teaching not by teaching in the accustomed manner, but by letting the children teach themselves. In order not to violate what Cizek believed was an innate creativity, he urged the children to draw what they felt like drawing”. (Donna Darling Kelly, Uncovering the history of children's drawing and art, Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004, p. 81-92) In 1903 Cizek´s first “Juvenile Art Class” was opened in the “Kunstgewerbeschule” in Vienna; it “consisted of forty to sixty children mostly of ages ranges from seven to fourteen years although there were occasionally a few older or younger, even as young as two. They painted in water colour and poster colour, executed woodcuts, linocuts, and papercuts, modelled in clay, embroidered, and stitched applicé, working from imagination. Nothing was taken from nature and copies.” (Stuart Macdonald, The History and Philosophy of Art Education, London: University of London Press, 1970, p 341f) … And we follow the traces and hints from the past back into the 1970s, 1980s and finally the 1990s and the present time, amazingly finding evidences of the unquestioned idea, that children will express “pure” or “embedded” fantasy and imagination and that these expressions are best described through projections to imaginary, “exotic” places beyond Europe – to use these places as projection screens for the idea of the unknown, the wild, the imaginative that might inspire and trigger the work with children. We understand our Learning Unit as an invitation to connect one's own experiences, concepts and approaches of art education, gallery and art based activities with children with historical concepts to ask if and what kind of connection there might exist. Together we want to learn where our idea of a good, imaginative method of art or gallery education stems from and what kind of construction this ideas might carry with them. The Vienna Learning Unit understands itself as connected to Learning Units or suggestions for discussions from the Cairo Working Group (Andrea Thal), the Kampala Working Group (Emma, Kitto), and Carmen Mörsch; we 1 „Child Art is an art which only the child can produce“ Cizek quoted in Macdonald might create together an “umbrella text”, first suggested by Carmen at the meeting in Vienna; in this context the quotes from the Viennese sources also aquired different meanings as we had the chance to ask what the construction of these constructions and European Racist imagination of colonial desires mean for the African context. Guidelines for a workshop proposed from the Viennese working group as the activity that might be done in different contexts with the material provided in our Learning Unit. The target groups of the workshop are teachers, artists who are interested in Child Art, art educators, people who experienced educators as children, people who work with children in creative, art based or parenting related contexts, people who carry on children art studios or activities for children in museum or gallery, theatres, youth clubs etc. or who are in general interested in the deconstruction of the idea of the “wild child”. The Vienna working group is planning to invite different people from different Viennese contexts of art / museum education to a workshop session, to try out the material, to shape the guidelines and questions and to include more personal stories of how to approach this material. Starting points • We assume that our Learning Unit will take place in a group setting. • Material that has been prepared on a table: 1. quotes from sources on art education, gallery education, Child Art in Vienna – printed on cards and prepared as a card deck in the middle of the table 2. blank index cards, every participant gets at approx. 5 blank index cards 3. yellow, blue and pink highlighter pens, every participant gets a set 4. Post Its and pens, every participant gets some 5. packaging paper to cover the whole table so that the material can be laid out on, and which can also be written on. 6. woolen threads and scotch tape on the table • An introductory text will be handed out which will give the broad historical context of the quotes chosen and the approach of three of the members of th Viennese group (Carla, Andrea, Karin) to the historical material will be explained. The central focus of these texts will be on the interest in gaining insight into how one’s own practice is reshaped and transformed by a problematic history and reshaped and transformed by dealing with this history in a critical way. • It might be useful to also provide food and something to drink as the workshop and the discussion might take longer. Breaks should be included by the needs of the group.. Procedure: Please follow the suggestions step by step to develop a common starting ground for discussions that connect own ideas on art education with certain historical points and ideas. Step 1-4 and step 7 are done alone, step 5-6 are collective processes: Here it might be good to agree on a time frame and may be a moderator and some roles of the discussion, 1. Step: Write down on the index cards (or a Post It) keywords, as an answer to the following question: “If you would do an art (art based educational) project for or with children, what would be your leitmotif, which you would align to what you are doing or which would be appropriate for what you are doing / which guides your practice?”. Write down every keyword on a separate card, and then put it aside. 2. Step: Take a quote from the card deck which has been prepared. Read it carefully. Take enough time for this (around 10 minutes) – NOTE: historical texts are often difficult to understand and can be irritating – this will be even more the fact as we are also dealing with Racist constructions. If you don’t want to deal with the a quote, if you don’t want to dig in the language used, please put it aside. With a yellow highlighter mark the places which seem to be important for gaining an understanding of the text: mark, for example, words which transmit in your opinion who is speaking, and who is addressed, or something which you don’t understand, or you don’t want to understand. 3. Step: Connect the keywords you noted at the beginning (see 1st Step) with the quote. Put the quote and your index cards with the key words on the table in front of you: is there a (language based) overlap, can you spot related concepts, closeness and distances? Place the keywords and the quotes in such a way to each other as to express this relationship. 4. Step: Read the quote again. Now mark in pink and blue (the order of the colours isn’t defined!), on the one hand positive, and on the other hand problematic and/or disturbing places in the quote. 5. Step: Take a look together at the constellations on the table and discuss whether the pink and blue parts offer any reasons to change the relationship (the proximity) of the keyword to the quote. Shift the distances between quotes and keywords during the discussion as long as you think it is necessary – it is also possible that everything is always in a move, that one keyword is very close and another keyword is on the other side of the table and that this order changes in the context of the thinking and discussion process.