22nd August, 2014
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
I am delighted to support the application being made by Cronulla Pre School to Sutherland Council
to fund an opportunity for the local children’s art coordinator of Hazelhurst Gallery, artist and Early
Childhood Teacher and Tutor, Alison Duff to attend the Preschool weekly to extend their art
program with the children.
For the past several years I have been visiting this preschool to present ideas and encouragement to
all the staff at this preschool. Over this time I have watched an already good preschool becoming a
great preschool as they take on board provocations and thrive on encouragement. Their Director
Tracey and all the staff are working towards the same goal, to bring the real world into the
classrooms so the children can rub shoulders with the best ideas, theories, adventures and big ideas.
An art program with a visiting artist would really cap off their work and enrich not only the young
children’s world but that of the staff as well, so that in future years and on other days ideas will filter
through to so many children.
We often think of art with young children as just being a bit of paint on some paper or slapping a few
boxes together with some PVA glue, but art for young children is much, much more. An Italian
educational theorist, Loris Malaguzzi and an American Theoretical Psychologist Professor Howard
Gardner brought us new ways of thinking about art as a child’s expressive or graphic language. Using
these languages of paint, paper, oil pastels, charcoal, clay and sand along with re-cycled objects
(natural and human made) is an essential way that the young child develops problem solving, learns
to persist when encountering difficulties, works outside their comfort zone, tries new ideas,
experiments and encounters new experiences in a way that they also develop logical thought. The
graphic expressive arts are the young child’s language, the way they tell us that they know, think
about and have ideas about. The graphic expressive arts are also a way a child follows an idea
through, just as an adult would write a report, or a persuasive essay. Suddenly the child finds out
how to make each step logically follow another so that the adult can be included in a new
conversation so that they can make their ideas visible. Art therefore spreads across the curriculum
into every area of creative and logical thought; it enriches a young child’s world.
The young artist, may indeed become an adult artist, but we have recently discovered that young
children grow their intelligence using art like materials and experiences and these experiences lead
them to become dentists and surgeons (having developed extremely good fine motor skills) or
contribute to the world of science and maths (logical thought) or musicians, actors, or into design
and engineering or any of the other wonderful ways they can add to our community as adults. Some
recent research published this week actually tells us that early indications of intelligence are found in
a young child’s simple drawings and paintings, their marks on paper.
The team at Cronulla have been working through these ideas for some time, each year gathering
new skills, new ways of thinking, new ways of encouraging and provoking young children’s
expressive graphic languages. This is the next step, an encouraging one, and one they will make
excellent use of I know, sharing their wonderful adventures with other professionals in future years.
I wish them well; in fact I wish them great success in this venture.
Joy Lubawy
(Educator: Academic: Author)