Listening is an active verb… It requires openness to change. It demands that we value the unknown, and overcome the feelings of emptiness and precariousness that we experience when our certainties are questioned.(Rinaldi, 2001,p.3)
Salal Place has been putting a Pedagogy of Listening to work in new ways, in an effort to activate pedagogical experimentations with children in their centre.
How can we sustain curriculum-making processes together?
Scarves are a familiar and beloved material within Salal Place. Alongside countless moments that constitute each day, scarves have become a dynamic co-participant for reconsidering ways that bodies and ideas move throughout the centre. Salal Place team is engaging with scarves as a method for learning to listen in new ways and co-create (and tell) new stories this year. Their ‘big body movement room’ has become a space for gauzy fabrication, a place where lines, tensions, slipperiness, the weighty-ness of scarves (and weightlessness, at times!) can be explored.
On Jan. 20th Sadaf and Narda removed books, materials, etc., and arranged scarves throughout the centre in ways (we hoped) might provoke new flows and encounters with children, scarves and educators the next morning. Children filtered into the centre the following day. Movement with scarves morphed and changed along with the increasing morning light and bodies. This provocation was intended to amplify (and document) scarf-child-educator encounters. See below for some of Emily’s notes from that day and a quote from Sylvia Kind and Adrienne Argent (2019), who the team has read and been thinking with about ‘Fabricating Fluidities’ in material encounters with scarves.
Jan. 21, 2024, Provocation Notes from Emily
Key Words: Warm, Gifting, Wrapping, Calm, Focused, Caring, Fluidity, Movement, Stillness
Thoughts/Perspectives: Arriving to Salal I noticed most of the room was bear with no additional materials provided other than the scarves. The scarves were placed gently and purposefully around the room some tied together creating a long chain, others draped over hanging décor in the room. 
While watching the group explore the room as it was offered, I noticed very little hesitation on where to “begin” with the scarves. The children that arrived first moved the scarves around the room to where they desired. Giving more movement and life to the scarves. I heard I____ say to Narda “don’t step on the scarves!”, as he was concerned for the care of them. 
I found it fascinating how quickly the scarves moved into the “Big Body Movement Room”, where they often live on a day-to-day basis. As if they were returning to home base. 
I loved the atmosphere that the sun created as it peered into the room, it created a warm and inviting space. 
The fascination with the shadows on the wall was really interesting to observe, especially J____ as he appeared to be mesmerized.
The use of the air purifier was wonderful to watch because the air added beautiful movement to the scarves. 
I heard some children talk about wrapping me up, and Sadaf said something along the lines of “wrapping a present”. Which I thought was sweet as they were so delicately and thoughtfully wrapping me up with the scarves. I also want to acknowledge how amazing it was that the children stayed all together in the room for over 1 hour, happily playing with each other and the scarves.
The [big body movement room] is not merely a background to children’s experimentations or a container for art explorations but an emergent space itself always in the making…It is not simply about arranging an artistic space or filling it with art materials, rather composing it so that there is an “invitation to realize projects not possible under existing conditions.” Thus, the work becomes an experiment, a desire to produce difference and a search for “unexplored horizons.” …The fabric makes visible the children’s lines of movements and exchanges. And while the fabric draws us all together in the tangles of connections, the nonconforming and slippery nature of the fabric actives a particular quality of being together. The fabric takes shape, but only temporarily because it cannot, on its own, hold a form…Children, educators, [program manager and pedagogist], fabric [light and air] are in moving correspondence together, and we give attention to what is being made and produced in the middle of this. (Kind & Argent, 2019, pp. 35-38)
Acorn did a similar work with fabrics not too long ago, when we were thinking deeply about our materials. At the time, Sadaf challenged us to think critically about our materials, and experiment with the tensions that occurred when materials became constant, rather than novelty. Interestingly enough, when choosing materials that were going to ‘stay’, we all settled and agreed upon fabrics!
Much like our current inquiry with paint, we noticed that fabric also has an interesting relationship to the different communities and collectives that it belongs to. It can be used and manipulated by all the members of our world(s); whether that’s a child picking it up, or the wind blowing it around. It’s so interesting to observe the stories that come from these materials, and the way that the body and language intersect.
Oh the things we will do with scarves! Floral, silky, cotton, solids, tasseled, and the coveted sky blue long one… so many scarves, so many ideas!
Everyone can be royalty with a cape, a dress, a scarf tied around one’s head. Taken outside, a scarf wrapped around the handlebars of a stride bike transforms into a chariot.
These ideas may seem obvious, but the passion to engage every. single. day. with these scarves has been beautiful to witness.
There is cooperation, and disintegration. Counting and sharing, and talks about what is fair. “You had that yesterday, it’s my turn NOW!” “I can help you tie that.” “That is a knot, not a bow.” “It’s a leash.” “It’s a blanket we can lie on together”…
This is just a quick thought on what I’ve been listening to with my eyes in Salal Place with the scarves. And it’s been music for the soul!
The big body movement room at Salal is an empty room that allows for fast movements and running. The scarves move fluidly around this room and often with great speed. The scarves fill a basket or a shelf, but regularly move all together throughout our program space. The children integrate the scarves into all play at Salal. They are often on their bodies or trailing behind them as they move around the room engaging with the other materials in our space. These scarves are an agentic resource.
One day in early January while we engaged in our outdoor space, the children asked “When are we going inside? We want to play inside.”
“Why do you want to be inside?” I asked.
“We want to play with scarves.” They stopped to think.
“Are they are going to get dirty?” They asked.
“Yes. Perhaps I should bring out a blanket.”
Without any adult guidance, the children remove their shoes as I hear them discuss how dirty their shoes are. A sheer is placed over top of them by an educator.
“This is a hideout for the scarves.” 7 children are huddled together on top of a pile of scarves.
“It’s a monster!” They hide under the sheer. Lots of giggling and laughing as they hide.
“What kind of monster?”
“A funky monster! Oh no, oh no! There’s a monster!”
At Salal there are times when the scarves move slowly, and other times these same scarves move with urgency. Whether the scarves are a cake, dress, cape, head covering, leash, fishing rod, beach blanket, jewelry, cannon ball, crown or tied to a piece of furniture or body part… the scarves bring children and educators together through their movement.
“Children like artists and makers, follow materials as they work with them. They join with materials as they circulate, mix and mutate.” Material Encounters. Kind, Sylvia. 2014. p. 9.