Collective ecological imagination
Abstract Forest of Imagination offers an alternative, creative approach to learning, rewilding education in spaces of possibility. Alongside artists and creative professionals, we are researching experimental sites for pedagogical innovation that focus on nature connection and our collective imagination. In our partnership work, our creative methodology, with everyone an artist, drives the ambition for artistic excellence. These new spaces of inquiry, engage artists, researchers and educators in creative and reflective practice that places ecological imagination, creativity, the arts and wellbeing at the heart of a future pedagogy. These spaces can be interrogated to distil a repertoire of creative pedagogical characteristics that optimise freedom, agency, choice and imagination.
Penny Hay
Dr. Penny Hay is an artist, educator and researcher, Professor of Imagination Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, Reader in Creative Teaching and Learning, Bath Spa University and Founding Director House of Imagination. Signature projects include School Without Walls and Forest of Imagination. Penny’s doctoral research focused on children’s learning identity as artists.
Penny is the strand leader for Creative Pedagogy in the Policy, Pedagogy and Practice Research Centre, Associate Director of TRACE at Bath Spa University and co-chair of the eARTh research group focusing on education, arts and the environment. She was recently the co-investigator on an Erasmus+ project Interstice in Europe researching the space between art, children and educators.
Penny is a National Teaching Fellow and Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, with awards from Action for Children’s Arts and Creative Bath.