Addyson Frattura

2.15 A Collective Practice of Walking Poems as a Pedagogical Art of Noticing (Paper)

Addyson Frattura – University of British Columbia, Canada

Marzieh Mosavarzadeh – University of British Columbia, Canada

Abstract:

Walking poems is a pedagogical art of noticing. The outcome is to nurture dialogue and practice the art of noticing. We are guided by questioning: How do we be human within the limiting structures of time and schooling? What can be imagined from movements beyond time? Schooling hurries us through skills, competencies, and assessment while enforcing structured limits of time. What is lost here and what might we seek to find? We offer examples of visual-textual practice of walking poems to showcase the art of noticing and its implications for education. Our orientations to the lands that we walk on and with invite us to question ourselves and how we make, who we make with, and what we make while we are here. First, we provide an overview of a historical and theoretical framework for the art of noticing. Second, we showcase three iterations of what emerges – unexpectedly so – through the visual-textual practice of walking poetry. While one walks, one observes what one normally rushes past. In such noticing, we create images and visuals to build language, images, dialogue, community, and knowledge. Third, we extend our work toward collaborative making across different lands, territories (conceptual and physical), and communities. There is pedagogical necessity in slowing down, in stopping time, in walking and noticing, and creating from what is noticed. Walking is not just arriving at a destination; it is an in-between place of possibility. Similarly, education is not the achievement of an endpoint that schooling assumes. We begin with respect and humility as we engage with histories, scholars, artists, and practices which each of us are at times included within and privileged from, and at other times excluded from. We approach this work through respectful cultural understanding in recognizing the colonial lands upon which we learn, walk, and notice.