Essentials Magazine Essentials Fall 2016 | Page 16

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Capturing The
Spirit of

in Schools
BY CHRISTIAN LONG

I

’ve been playing a single 1-min Internet video of little kids splashing
in a puddle for most of the day. And I’m captivated. Dressed in bright
colored full-body rain suits and rain boots, a gaggle of pre-school
students wanders a gravel forest road until they encounter a giant rain
puddle. Everything in their world stops. One child enters the puddle:
exploring, laughing, running. Then another follows until all joyfully do
so. They then circle back to do it again and again. To the viewer, it is a
remarkable moment of splashing, laughing…and pure wonder-fueled
discovery.
The viewer first asks the obvious:
Where are they? Where are they
going? Where are the teachers? What

16 essentials | fall 2016

are they actually supposed to be doing?
Then slowly, almost magically, one’s
imagination becomes more curious,

like the kids themselves: What are they
making sense of? What are they feeling? What is this sparking in the the
nearby adults? Where else do they get
to explore without boundaries or adults
guiding every choice? What are the
long-term effects of ongoing playful
discovery?
As viewers’ questions unfold while
watching this video of ForestKids
students in Nova Scotia, Canada, it becomes less about the ‘what’ and more
about the ‘why’. And as a designer, this
shift makes all the difference in the
world.
Over the last 15 years of collaborat-