Playeum Creative Learning Model
As Impresarios of Play, we develop programmes coming from a more facilitative stance, to engage children in the processes of learning. We want to spark their curiosity – improving the quality of their thinking and increasing their appetite for learning. We encourage children to reflect on their activities.
Our priority is the development of ideas and individual creativity.
Playeum Active Makers-of-Meaning
Whilst teaching of specific techniques or craft skills are perceived as important, we foster learning through asking questions – we encourage our children to embark on a process of enquiry, akin to a research process. Our children should be seen as active “makers of meaning” rather than as passive recipients of disembodied knowledge. As parents, we have a responsibility to enable our children to articulate issues and concerns that have significance or relevance to them.
Playeum Endless Possibilities
We are great optimists and positive believers of “endless possibilities”. Hence, at Playeum, we have numerous creative and innovative ways to give our children ‘a voice’ and to encourage their broader critical and reflective thinking. We believe we can do this even with Special Rights Children, to engage them through discussions, exchanging ideas and experiences.
Playeum Active Co-Creators and Co-learners
As Co-Creators with the children, we facilitate the generation of shared knowledge between all participants including the teacher who would identify themselves as co-learners, who question and re-organise their knowledge, rather than act as the infallible experts transmitting information.
The Playeum environment facilitates nurturing:
Parents who participate in Playeum Active Co-Creator and Co-learners programmes with their children will be able to reignite their own love for learning and pass this on to their children.
The DEMOS (a UK independent think tank and research institute) report for NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, UK) looked at the influences on young people and where they learn most from. ‘Parents and family’ were identified ahead of school (39 per cent vs. 37 per cent), showing the importance of both formal and informal learning environments (NESTA, 2007 press release).
Parents remember those afternoons at home with your children and how the children need entertainment, and as parents you want quality time with them. You know you can do it if only you had the right set-up. Even if you could get the right equipment, it can be so time consuming – setting tables, getting out the relevant reference materials, the colours and the crayons; before you know it, after you have set it all up, your kids may have moved on to something else that caught their attention. Now you would wish there was a place you could just pop by with your kids to have some fun and a creative afternoon exploring the world. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an environment that was stimulating, filled with other kids whom your child could connect with?
Well, Playeum designs and creates such stimulating places, environments, programmes and events where you as parents can indulge with your kids – share your experiences, explore together, ask questions together and learn – develop this life skill together.
By exemplifying the attributes of a creative learner, our cohort of professionals (including artists) can act as mentor or role model to children, parents and their family. This works most effectively because of the artistes’ high level of engagement with their art. This is like an apprenticeship – where the artist or teacher is perceived as a ‘master practitioner’ who embodies their practice and reveals their know how through their actions.
At Playeum, we seek to bridge pedagogy and learning, we seek to recognise and value the learner’s experience.
Playeum beyond the general public space supports both B2C and B2B organisations. As a well-experienced team supported by professionals in the field of arts and education, co-creating with passionate artists as well as a good cohort of volunteers; we work with and support both B2C and B2B organisations and their aspirations. We have had the privilege of working on strategic initiatives for corporations; both programme development as well as execution of corporate social responsibility programmes, always with a focus on children.
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