There were thousands of them! Elk, boats, fish and humans etched into the rock faces everywhere we looked.
It was an incredible sight for me and my family as we visited the petroglyphs at Nämsforsens in northern Sweden this past summer. A staggering 2,595 carvings have been discovered in this area so far, believed to have been made by Stone Age hunters more than 6,000 years ago! For many years, people walked this area without recognizing what lay beneath their feet. The rock carvings are now painted red to help us see and take care to preserve them.
Archeologists have theories about these petroglyphs. They might have been carved to tell stories, or to share news releases by hunters who found an extraordinarily good place to hunt and fish. They might also have been part of a sacred ritual in which gratitude was expressed for food and community.
Our inborn desire to create traces of ourselves and our lives through mark-making and art is very old. Whether it’s a scribble, graffiti, or an inuksuk, art speaks. It is a language that offers us a metaphorical tool to express ideas, experiences, and feelings.
Building Relationships Through Art
I am also struck by how these petroglyphs expressed place and community. They speak of an intergenerational collective experience. They express a deep relationship to land, water, one another, and to the other-than-human world.
As I reflect on our current social and political climate in North America and in much of the world, these ancient values shine rather dimly. And I wonder, could we still look to the language of art in our contemporary contexts to explore, articulate, and deepen values of community, relationships to one another, and to the natural world?
Educators in Reggio Emilia believe strongly in building community, and a place of belonging that is in relationship with one another, nature, and the language of art. Before children come to their early learning programs for the first time, teachers tell parents that individual pieces of art will not be coming home with their child. Rather parents will see their child’s unique thinking and learning through documentation that is in relationship to the work of the group.
I recently visited Kanata Research Park in Ottawa, where I witnessed this in action. Children in one of the classes had developed a strong bond with a snail named Selene. The children’s loving relationship to this snail was evident in individual drawings throughout the classroom, but each drawing was also an integral part of documentation that lifted up the children’s varied and evolving renderings of the snail’s shell, and their collective research about what the snail preferred to eat.
What might change in our programs if our intention was about building relationships through art? Would children feel a greater sense of belonging if they regularly engaged in art that they worked on together? Would they grow more in their thinking and expression if they were encouraged to observe and discuss their art-led wonderings and ideas with one another? Would they grow in their sense of otherness if they needed to negotiate their use of space and tools? Would a deeper sense of community develop if the pride of a final product was interwoven with the pride of being in relationship with others, including nature?
Selene the snail
Exploring the grammar of charcoal on paper
Kelly Mills Kallin – Open invitation for children to study and paint a tree in their school yard - together
Roberta Pucci – Playing with light, wind, and sound through group creation of a ‘curtain’ among trees
What are the spoken and unspoken lessons children are internalizing through the relationships we hold up through our invitations to learning? How do our intentions for belonging, community and reciprocity with one another and the natural world resonate with what we do?