CREATIVE FIELDS In the non-Catholic school that I went to, we started each day by reading literature. Just for 30 minutes. Some would start the day out in the open, and unintentionally, this gave us a breather in relation to the demands and the effort that learning imposed on all of us. At last, I am able to resume that routine, but now it has become a key element in my life. For years, I was unaware of the fact that literature helped me get rid of my burdens and worries, and that it enabled me to work in a more natural way when teaching because I started noticing the rhythm of words and how you can play with them. To others, there may be a different creative field. If I worked in a museum, I would love to have the opportunity to move about in a creative world during working hours without thinking that this might be risky. I think that this would generate more energy and flexibility, and reduce the fear of not being ready on time and the grumpiness that comes from being under pressure from numbers or from having to please. So much so that you would be able to document the changes in people’s mood, dedication and the order of the museums’ discourse. Another option could be to learn from the creative times where you absorb everything: the senses, the activities, the question mark at the end of a sentence, the subtleness of the uncomfortable or the carefree, and all of the impressions that you come across without really taking them in. I refer to days where you used to feel a burning pressure from control and a demand for perfection. An exhibition room that is ready for the users. An educational programme that is to be converted into an endless string of educational events. An educational programme where you listen for the profundity of the intuitive.
THE OLDEST AND STRONGEST TREES MAKE ROOM FOR THE SMALLEST AND WEAKEST THROUGH LITTLE FIRES. THIS IS HOW THE FOREST REGENERATES. At museums, you often get the impression that nobody really knows what a learning process is, what connections there are between the institution, the surrounding world and the present, or how you can find and fulfil your role in the world.14 For bell hooks, the ‘radical opening’ is a path to new learning and knowledge perspectives that explore our way of thinking. With a quote from Judith Simmer-Brown, bell hooks proposes that one way of opposing an authoritarian pedagogy – where learning is understood on the basis of results and certainty – is to start to learn from uncertainty and ambiguity, and not consider any theories or concepts as lasting. Placing greater emphasis on the study of the process and being led by that which you do not know, without succumbing to the fake ‘control’ – at times tacit – of the official, the artist or the explanatory text, or the orchestration of the display as the only statement.
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