The Bwo-me (Life's Breath) creativity workshop: visual arts and education

The 'Bwo-Me' (Life's Breath) intercultural 'hands-on' workshops are particularly concerned with issues of inclusivity and teaching for diversity and provide the opportunity to experience and understand arts-based practices that are culturally derived. The studio-based workshops aims to foster 'creativity' potentialities in pre-service teachers so as to increase their capacity to mentor children with significant learning disabilities such as gifted dyslexics. This visual art-based intercultural 'hands-on' workshops provides spaces for teachers-in-training to become positive cultural agents for change (Saltmash 2006). The research methodology applies theories from hermeneutics and post-structuralism to emphasize issues of representation, repetition, signification, spatial awareness, meaning, identity and difference. This socio-cultural dimension to learning in the Arts highlights the inter-relation between the individual, Visual Arts education and the socio-cultural context (Atkinson 2002; Eisner 1972). This Bwo-Me (Life's Breath) case study explores the works of contemporary Aboriginal artists from the Boomalli Aboriginal Co-operative Ltd. in Sydney (Bancroft 2011). The research builds on reconciliation themes recently developed by the author/artist/curator during studio-based research with pre-service primary art teachers at a tertiary institute. A variety of drawing, clay work and printmaking practices were explored on different surfaces as a way of engaging participant's imagination and heightening their sensory awareness. 'Mindful Creativity' tendencies (Dunoon 2002; Dunoon and Langer 2011) and dispositions were noticed during the workshops while artefacts were measured using elements from Torrance (1974) creative thinking by noticing concepts such as fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.