On International Children’s Day, we launched the Polish pilot “I Wear the Top Hat Being Barefoot” at the Jan Paweł II General Education School Complex in Niepołomice.
The aim of the pilot is to explore how experiencing art in the classroom and engaging in creative thinking influence learning processes, school achievement, and peer relationships. We are also interested in whether methods from the field of art can strengthen students’ agency and give them a real sense of influence over what school looks like and how everyday learning takes place.
During the first workshop, second-grade high school students participated in a game focused on searching for an antidote to school boredom. Through this activity, they explored the school space and then developed ideas for innovations based on artistic methods — solutions that could help transform the school into a more friendly, creative, and learning-supportive environment.
As part of the process, we are also analysing young people’s attitudes towards art and culture at different stages of the pilot: before the workshops begin, immediately after their completion, and again in the new school year. We want to see whether the workshop experience helps students gain a stronger sense of agency and influence over the way learning is organised at school.
The following day, we repeated the workshop at the Kazimierz Wielki School Complex in Brunary, a village in Małopolska located in the Low Beskids.
The schools were selected in order to compare differences in how art and culture are approached and perceived in diverse social environments.
In the new school year, we will return to all the schools participating in the pilot to reflect together on which of the innovations designed by children and young people — and recognised by them as their own and as responding to their needs — can be implemented in a lasting and systemic way into school educational practices and the process of learning school subjects.
School can be a place where young people not only acquire knowledge, but also co-create a space that is friendly, creative, and open to their voices.
