Events calendar

A Day in the Life of ... Encountering a Network Nursery

Madeley, Telford

During the school year 2019 -20 we have arranged three dates in which you can visit Madeley Nursery School in Spring 2019 and encounter theirs, and Sightlines Initiative Network's, principles in practice. 

Participation is limited to 8 on each occasion.

documentation displayed"We are a Reggio inspired school with a beautiful learning environment and exciting child led curriculum. As a research school, we are involved in many national and international projects linked to early learning. Our aim is to create 'a community of learning where there are endless opportunities to discover together through curiosity, creativity and play."

Madeley Nursery School in Telford are keen participants in Sightlines' Network since 2000. This day  is designed for those wanting to explore the possible ways of practicing the principles of an environment of enquiry, and engage in dialogue with a committed staff group who are making keen endeavours to explore and develop their own practice. 

The day will begin promptly at 9a.m. at the Nursery, with an introduction followed by time to observe in the morning. After lunch there will be opportunities for discussion, and at the close of the school day, general discussion with staff. We will explore how the principles of Sightlines Initiative can be developed in your daily practice; the influences and insprations from Reggio, and the inevitable challenges. 

Click the button 'Choose Dates & Location' for further details and to book (there are Not multiple locations, in this case!)

Metaphor: Creating new ways to touch, speak and see the world

online

Metaphor is a festive intuition, a sudden explosion, a form of thought that enlights the way our mind works when it crosses and broadens its field of knowledge. During the seminar we will use what is known, daily perceptions around us, to reach, touch, feel what we still don’t know. We will communicate new discoveries lying in the new territory of metaphors where words are spells which bring us closer as human beings.

We will explore how the process of creating metaphors leads to unusual, unexpected and original procedures and perspectives. We will try out how this is an attitude of investigation and participation in reality, which pushes us to open up and expand canonical boundaries.

The seminar will also encourage to ride paradoxes, as children usually do to research the world around and interact with adults, jumping from an uncoscious to a conscious process in everyday life. We will see how games, transformation hypotheses, paradoxes, find their opportunity to develop through conjunction / relationship with another subject and new relationships / visions, in a word, through metaphors.

This seminar is designed to inform the current Sightlines Initiative early childhood pedagogy action-research project into Visual Metaphor. It is free to Sightlines Initiative subscribers.

It will also be pertinent to all who are interested in the ways in which adults tune in to young children’s thinking and learning.

Viviana Fiorentino was born and grew up in southern Italy. After achieving her Doctorate, travelled across Europe, from Switzerland to Germany, England and finally Belfast where she now lives, writing novels and poetry, teaching Italian literature, and leading creative writing workshops for cultural minorities.
In 2018, she was awarded two Italian poetry prizes. Her poems have appeared in literature blogs and international magazines. A selection of her poems is published in ‘Writing Home: the New Irish poets’. In 2019, she published a poetry collection in Italy and her first novel.
She has been involved in many different festivals, poetry readings and projects, such as the 2019. ‘Sky, you are too big’, which revolved around the themes of travelling, migration and displacement.
She is in the editorial staff of Carteggi Letterari (Italian periodical Lit magazine) with the column ‘Neither here, nor there’ and she periodically writes for the magazine TerreLibere about migration and politics.