Pearson Creative Research Fellowship, British Library

Proposal (rejected)

Library of Multiple Knowledges

Lottie Child

I wish to use the Pearson Creative research Fellowship at the British Library as an opportunity for focused research, with the aim of creating a database provisionally called The Library of Multiple Knowledges through which participants can relate and share knowledges online and face to face. With this database I hope to add another layer to the British Library, reflecting a multiplicity of knowledges in varied forms.

In the process of making the database I wish to develop a methodology for engaged research with groups of participants into eliciting, organizing and sharing information. The methods of my research are also the themes, namely taxonomy and multiple learning styles. The database details the personal skills and knowledges that workshop participants use and value. This information will be available on the open source online database in searchable form, much like a library catalogue, users will be encouraged to use the database to seek out information and exchange.
The Library of Multiple Knowledges is a system that engages multiple participants, built on their skills and the things they know, therefore acknowledging the complexity of the interlinking frameworks that each person has for making meaning. The database will contain many kinds of knowledge anything from Capoeira moves, how to download music, how to grow plants from seed, making egg curry, short cuts for walking in the tunnels in the underground to where to buy yams etc.
To develop this database I intend to make links with existing initiatives, see URLS below. The initiatives are Ella Gibbs’ Spare Time Job Centre, the Distributed Library Project and The University of Openness’ Faculty of Taxonomy. The Spare Time Job centre was commissioned by the Chisenhale Gallery in 2002, intended to help people make the most of their spare time and make links between people to shared spare time. The Distributed Library Project, is a world wide, multi node, online library where people exchange, review and lend from their own collections at home precipitating interaction and discussion. The University of Openness is peer initiated ‘self institution’, It’s Faculty of Taxonomy is a collaborative research project into taxonomies and how their applications determine the information they contain.



My Approach to the workshops
I have five years experience of workshops for leading contemporary art galleries in London with adults, young people and children and see these interactions as part of my art practice.
I wish to examine intersubjectively, how we classify, organise and share knowledge, and find ways to link these personal forms of knowledge to the rich and diverse resources of the British Library, demonstrating how individuals can build on and extend their understandings and worldviews through access to information in a variety of forms. I will use the workshops and research time to find out more about constructivist theories of learning, based on integrating new information into one’s existing framework for understanding the world.
Each person has their own combination of learning styles. As I learn more about how to recognise and stimulate various learning styles I will incorporate these ideas into the workshops and experiment with using colour, sound, books as texts and as objects, artefacts, music and movement in order to connect with participants and understand the values of their various skills. Certain skills and knowledges are invisible in certain contexts for example being able to speak four languages may not be acknowledged in a maths class. I’m interested in focusing on the potential blind spots in my workshops so as to create a situation where participants skills and knowledges are valued and can effect the context that I am creating. I aim to develop the database using the workshops as a research tool, so that it is able to reflect the complexity of people’s lives, minds and world views. I will demonstrate how various kinds of knowledge are important beyond those conventionally conceived as valuable i.e. book and academic based learning. We will discuss how certain kinds of knowledge are valued over others and the factors that determine the knowledge landscape we live in.
I will draw on the British Library’s collection to provide examples of organisational structures e.g. the dewy decimal system, bibliographies, alphabetical order, ancient Chinese taxonomies based on things the emperor does and does not own, species, hierarchies, rhizomatic structures, time and space based organisational structures, chronology and personal, whimsical, political, cultural bases for organising information. I will use examples of web based initiatives which classify and organise information using databases, contributed to by their users such as Dicshunary.com (sic) the Distributed Library Project, and consume.net. ELSA, Autolabs – Brazil and the University of Openness.
I will encourage participants to share the kinds of knowledge and skills they use and which go to making up their sense of themselves. We will then engage in a process of organising and linking these knowledges with books, artefacts, sounds, maps and other resources in the British Library. To do this we will draw maps, do ‘sculpts’ using objects to represent ideas, possibly make songs with lyrics made up of the ideas we are working with and create other playful ways to organise information.
We will consider how the British Library categorises texts and then experiment with alternative modes of classification. We will play a game where we reclassify books thus demonstrating how this can change their meaning for example considering re-shelving “how to build cob houses” in cookery and “The History of Steam Locomotives” in mythology.

What I would like to research in the BL reading rooms
I would like to research
• Taxonomies – ancient, cultural, personal, Chinese, African, whimsical, scientific etc as starting points for discussion in the workshops on how organising information determines it.
• Learning styles in general and physical, kinaesthetic in particular.
• Current debates in information politics. (BL Intellectual Property department) and how institutional structures determine how we interact with them.
• Current theories on the multiplicity of modes of interaction suggested by the internet.


Creative outcomes
• A database of skills and knowledges online to allow people to make links, to share and exchange.
• 2 events where participants contribute and exchange skills and knowledges.
• An analogue version of the database using phone and post through a leaflet explaining the initiative and instructions for how to use the analogue version for those without internet access.
• A video art work ‘climbing the British Library’ footage of creative ways to interact with the built structure of this famous institution.( I take health and safety considerations extremely seriously and would work with the BL on this matter)
• I would also like to use the opportunity to research the possibility of the BL extending its WIFI access through being part of consume.net, wireless communities, which provide free Internet access and file sharing within localities, these online communities allow for the exchange of music, video and text.


Wider Contexts into which my research fits
Self institution and support structures for experimental idea adventures.
Critical debates on Information politics
The Olympics (physical intelligence expanded ideas of what sport means)
Teaching methodologies
Critical debates on participatory art
Critical debates on gallery education
Critical debates on social inclusion policies in cultural institutions
The importance of risk taking as a means or expanding one’s abilities and understanding, there is a link between risk and constructivist learning, when people try new things and fail they have to re- adjust their world view to take in the new information.




Biography
I am an artist based in London, I show regularly both in London and in Europe. As a creative research fellow with the British Library I would like to build upon my work in experimental self education at the peer initiated university of openness. I began a self directed MA in 2002 with the intention of constituting the UO by studying at it . The UO invites people to use it in any way they find useful. It is constantly evolving in the interactions and imaginations of its users and online in the form of a wiki, an editable website. The Wiki is a structure within which people can independently create pages without a centralised control system, one of the many alternatives to dominant cultural forms for creating and accessing content afforded by web based technonlogies.
Much of my research is collective with the aim of making meaning consensually. I have been researching learning and teaching methodologies as I practically apply them. My research takes multiple forms themes include: The body in and the politics of the built environment. Learning styles especially kinaesthetic intelligence, play and integrating intellectual with physical intelligence. Frameworks for self education and playful and critical uses of new technologies.
Risk in multiple senses including risk taking as a means of self-education.
Play – collective, non-goal oriented, engagements allowing all users to dictate the agenda and direction of activities As a frame work for research I founded Climbing Club, a group activity which takes place monthly to investigate the built environment of the City of London. Through it I propose multiple ways to engage with- moving around, above and through-rigid structures, thus expanding possible modes of thinking and behaving, beyond those prescribed by the city’s constant process of transforming all human activity into capital. I produced Guide to Risk in the City which recently showed at the ICA, London and which I consider to be an outcome of my research with Climbing Club.
I use my work with gallery education departments, many of whom I have worked with for the past 5 years as collaborative research with children. A residency with the Camden Arts Centre afforded me the opportunity to create video and maps with children, using a vibrant process of consultation and collaboration. I used series of workshops at the Chisenhale Gallery as interactive research to investigate schemas and how children reflect on their own play. This resulted in a series of events entitled Building an Alternate Reality out of Cardboard. And Instructions for how to play for adults who may have forgotten.
I am skilled at reflecting on my own thinking and at articulating it verbally. I’m practised in making links and building on existing ideas through creative interpersonal engagement with people. I am dyslexic, this mostly effects my ability to organise information so this project is a form of personal constructivist learning.



URLS
Lottie Child’s wiki
www.malinky.org

Lottie Child’s project documentation
http://twenteenthcentury.com/projects.php?mem_id=4∞

The university of Openness’ faculty of Taxonomy
http://twenteenthcentury.com/uo/index.php/FacultyTaxonomy∞

List of distributed library nodes
http://dlpdev.theps.net/ListofExistingDlpNodes?v=91t∞

Consume.net – community wireless nodes in London
http://consume.net∞

Semantic Web a project that extends the possibilities of the internet by exceeding what is possible with HTML, it intends to create a universal medium for information exchange by giving meaning to web content in a manner understandable by machines.
www.semanticweb.org




What I want to have for the interview

1. Disk with images of
Chisenhale w’shops
WHL, EGA and SCCS geochaching
Climbing Club Helsinki
Emotionmap
Emanuel res.
Uo logos
Carto congress docu. ( show how I co-organised a large scale event)
2. Add to bio about exploring the peripheries of institutions, not aligning myself with art, academic, or new media scenes (and as a result avoiding getting focused internal politics) wishing to remain flexible and critical systemic?
3. Map of related projects and how the UO frames my work and related debates, people, groups, events. hacktivism, semantic web, uo, etc but not all splayed out, making the links clear.
The Uo is a framework
Influences
Inspirations
Related debates
4. Explantion of how I see the research method working.


list of people I would like to work with
Description of workshop with Chisenhale
An engaged research project working with year three and four pupils from Haley Primary School in Tower Hamlets. The Aim was to collaboratively investigate learning schemas*. I came across learning schemas in Cathy Nitbrown’s book Threads of Thinking she describes how at different stages in their development children will make use of patterns to make sense of the world. The workshop took the starting point that patterns can exist in many ways using many senses and faculties. To understand a circular schema and possible ways to use it, children where instructed to construct assemblages using round objects and also to draw ‘round things, in round ways or draw round and round’, and to make observations from the world around them The workshop was designed to have ample opportunity for spontaneity and play, of their own volition the children moved, sang, addressing the circular schema as we consensually developed our understanding of roundness and circular motion. Two boys innovated a simple, spinning machine for drawing circles constructed from recyled material. The schema enclosure was also investigated. The workshops did not idnetiify specific children for whom particular schemas were stronger rather was a situation where together we suggested and used a plethora of modes of investigating an idea using the body, construction,objects, writing, fantasy, sound, interaction, conversation and song.

• As described by Cathy Nutbrown in ‘Threads of Thinking’



The research is into constructivist learning theories and learning styles

To find out what they are by reading about them applying them and analysing the outcomes of the workshops. What I want to know is do different people approach learning and knowledge in different ways. This will help me to configure the library/database in response to how the contributers think.

I want the workshops to make it possible for participants to value their knowledge in ways they may not have done before.


Refugee group
Local groups

I wish to avoid imperialist or colonialist thinking by creating three different structures, which when run together contradict each other bringing to light some of their limitations and creating criticality.


Research methodology explained
Aim to educate myself about the constructivist and learning styles ( need to clarify)
Inter-research
I want to know about learning styles and how people have personal approaches to learning, making sense of the world.

Group A
What do you know?
How do you learn?

How do you approach this problem? Ie organising a load of blocks.
Will this tell me the schemas people use?

Schemas i.e circular,enclosure which others?




“I need merely refer to the universe of prejudice, repression and omission that every successful education makes you accept, and makes you remain unaware of, tracing out the magic circle of powerless complacency in which the elite schools imprison their elect”
Bourdieu from “a lecture on the lecture” from
In other words essays towards a reflexive society