Footprints
- Developing communities through creative engagement in the environment
- Enabling children, families and educators to work, play and learn in their local outdoor spaces
Our vision is for communities that play, learn and work together in the outdoors. Parents/carers and educators determine whether, in what way and how frequently their children access these natural spaces. The Footprints programme works directly with these adults and with their children in each community to develop their capacity and confidence to engage meaningfully in these spaces.
We have engaged with children as young as one and older than 81. We have worked in vast woods and small muddy plots. What all projects share is a commitment to sharing and discovering the joys and challenges of outdoor learning.
Cambridgeshire Early Years has commissioned Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination to establish outdoor learning projects for young children and their educators in summer 2012. CCI artists Deb Wilenski, Sally Brown and Filipa Pereira Stubbs will be working with children, staff and parents from Kidzone, a nursery in Whittlesey, and Shirley Primary School, Cambridge, throughout the summer term.
The project blog will document the adventures in these two nature reserves as they unfold. Follow it here.
Visit the Histon Footprints blog to read more about CCI's last outdoors project with Histon Children's Centre and the woods at Homefield Park (autumn 2011 - spring 2012).
Adventuring in a Cambridge Forest offers an account of an earlier Footprints project with children, staff and parents from Colleges Nursery, north Cambridge, and their explorations at Milton County Park.
We work with:
Educators
CCI can support the professional development of educators through study sessions, mentoring, conferences and resources. These focus on developing the understanding, skills and confidence to run their own creative outdoor sessions and projects. Sessions are collaborative and encourage the practice of experiencing, reflecting, talking, planning, experimenting, and documenting. There is an emphasis on linking the thinking in each session back to participants’ own settings. We have run study days, mentoring programmes and can work with groups to develop their own resources.
Sessions can be run in your own settings, or local green spaces where available. CCI also has links with a number of magical woodland and creative spaces in the Cambridgeshire area.
The children revealed sides of themselves that were previously less known, less developed, less obvious – there was a real sense of the children flourishing in this environment and the joy this bought to both parents and educators. (educator)
Our recent conference Doing the Right Thing worked with early years educators from across the region. For more information click here.
Schools
CCI also works directly with groups of children and their educators. CCI artists work closely with staff through planning and reflection to share practice to ensure sustainable changes for schools. Outdoor learning sessions can be planned for one day, to link across seasons or to be a regular programme of visits. They can also be focused on developing new resources for classrooms.
Families, Groups and Communities
Workshops can also be planned for wide range of community groups; for families, for teenagers, as part of professional development days (link) and in order to develop resources for spaces.
Tamsin Wimshurst, Education Officer at the Cambridge and Country Folk Museum commented:
CCI fitted the ethos and environment of the cemetery very well. They allowed the audience to explore the area as they felt they would like to whilst gently leading them to share what they had discovered with others. The booklet for families was an imaginative and useful resource for the website. Its contents led people down an imaginative path of their own choosing to investigate what could be seen, smelt, imagined and heard in the cemetery. The format of the self folding book provided an ideal resource that they could take around the cemetery with them and draw what they discovered in it. A great little format.
Parents who have worked with us have said:
Everybody should have an opportunity to explore outdoors just once a week….. It’s just great to be outside. I was fascinated by how my daughter was concentrating on tasks. …Isabella enjoyed it so much my concerns ebbed away…I think she would go every day if she could
She (the artist) bought new, fresh eyes and a really listening approach to working with children. She has the ability to make all learners feel valued, adults and children.
Footprints enriches lives, changes lives. With CCI the children will learn that the beauty of the countryside is theirs to enjoy, and ultimately, theirs to protect. The value of CCI to the children, to the local community, and to the preservation of the countryside will be immeasurable.
Michael Morpurgo, Patron of CCI (author and former Children’s Laureate)
