Learning by Heart
Corita Kent (1918-1986) was an artist, educator and social justice advocate. She became a nun at 18, joining the Immaculate Heart of Mary, eventually teaching and running the Immaculate Heart College Art Department. Much of Corita’s artistic and teaching processes focussed around a simple methodology: “Begin, look, connect & create, work & play, celebrate!” (Loste, 2008). This methodology, along with artwork, short essays, observations and assigments was put together by Corita and her former student Jan Steward into the book Learning by Heart (2008, first published in 1992). It was here that my own research began to take specific shape. This book drew me away from slightly abstract ideas about creativity and ‘making stuff’ and the complex relationship between wanting to have fun and needing to be, as Stan Brakhage would describe, “the Professional” (Brakhage, 1971). And it was here that I first learnt about the concept of plork, my favourite playful portmanteau, one which is becoming one of the foundational ideas of my research. I mention Corita a lot in my writing, but have never really delved too deeply into why I feel like she has played such an integral role in forming the central proposition of this research, which is attemting to build a plorkful framework for animation.
Learning by Heart is a strange book. Part workbook, part collection of essays, part observation on her own work, Learning by Heart takes the reader through many of the stages of Corita’s thought process and reflects on a methodology that roots itself in taking the ordinary, the every day and working - and playing - with it until you have made something. In the chapter “WORK PLAY” Corita writes about slipping between the two states - and about how “Letting yourself go free, playing around until something comes, is often very hard work” (Kent & Steward 2008, p154). It is this chapter, and her particular ideas on the interplay between play and creative output that particularly interests, confounds, confuses and inspires me.
The notion of play and output being linked is not new. John Dewey was writing about the complex relationship between play and work way back in 1910, arguing that play is actually most effective with at the very least an understanding of output. This contrasts with many theoretical writings on play that play must be “purposeless” (Burghardt, 2005; Henricks, 2006; Eberle, 2014). I always struggled to get my head around the idea that play is purposeless. Purposeless, in this context at least, feels like that wrong word - indeed, there have been many studies on play in animals and children that highlight just how important play is to development, learning, socialisation, understanding and comprehending the world around us (Huizinga 1949; Salen & Zimmerman 2003; Russel & Lester 2008). I can appreciate an argument that purposeless in this context means that play is undertaken for joy, for its own sake, not specifically to achieve something. Sometimes I make videos and animations to entertain myself or my friends. I whistle while I’m waiting for the bus. In yoga I play with what my body can do, but often in an attempt to explore specific poses. Which of these is purposeless? Which is these do - or do not - focus on output? Does it matter?
No definition of play is sufficient to cover all the bases of play: as we already know, play is too complicated, mercurial, subjective. That is partly why Dewey turns his focus not on play, but playfulness. Play, Dewey says, is the outward manifestation of a playful attitude. Playfulness is a way of approaching the world. And I think that’s what inspires me most about Corita, her writing and her work. Corita believed where play and work could coexist and facilitate each other; that they were both necessary, useful. Like Dewey (1910), Corita understood that play could be productive, and that productivity could facilitate wanting to play more. Making art was, for her, being playfully productive, traversing the “abstract and the concrete, the joy and the labor” (p159). To describe the interplay of playfulness and work as a subjective feeling - “the ecstacy we feel when work and play are one” (Steward & Corita, p159) - she coined the term ‘plork’. I was drawng to this specifically because, unlike many definitions of play, Corita immediately relates this as a feeling, an experience. Not only that, but a specific feeling that sets it apart from playfulness in general - it is working playfully, or playing productively. Understanding this particular experience, and how to encourage and manifest it, would not only be useful in my own creative practice, but my teaching practice also. But how?
Rikke Nørgård et al’s research on signature pedagogies for playful learning defines three level “structures” at which play can enter into the structure of learning (Fig 1, Nørgård et al, 2017): Surface (game), Deep (play) and Implicit (playful). In order to fully engage students in playful pedagogies, they argue, it is necessary to access the implicit structures which underpin playful learning. It is necessary, if not essential, to create an environment that demonstrates the values of democracy, playfulness, failure-accepting and self-motivation.
Figure 1. Signature pedagogy for playful learning in higher education (Nørgård et al. 2017)
At Immaculate Heart, Corita asked her students to “collectively reimagine what a learning environment could be” (corita.org), which became the now-famous Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules (Fig. 2). Rules, as we know, are another important aspect of play (Eberle, 2014). But what it most interesting about these rules - to me, at least - is the way they flit between rules of the classroom (pull everything out of your teacher), rules for work (”The only rule is work”) and more esoteric rules for life (”Be happy whenever you can”). What this demonstrates is, wittingly or unwittingly, Corita and her students acknowledged the importance not only of setting the rules of the “game” of making work, but rules that could help create a playful mindset that supported this.
Through the lens of Nordgard et al’s research, Corita’s ruleset focusses primarily on Deep and Implicit structures for playful learning. In a sense, accepting the rules is a personal choice - therefore it demonstrates some “intrinsic motivation”; the rules clearly eschew the idea of failure and support risk-taking (”Consider everything an experiment…Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail”). But the ruleset is also openly playful - “There should be new rules next week”. The rules, like play, are almost metacommunicative - they are play-full.
Figure 2. David Mekelburg - Corita Kent’s Rules & Hints for Students & Teachers
This playful attitude to plork intrigues me. What rules would I set myself to support my own plork? What rules would/do contemporary animators - or indeed, animation students - set themselves at the start of a project? Could I revisit Corita’s ruleset for the contemporary animation studio/student?
I still have to research further into the other writing and research undertaken into productive play in creative Higher Education. Corita’s work has become a cornerstone of my research partly not only to its content, but the playful way in which it is delivered - a factor which is important to both my creative and pedagogical practices. I believe that by putting plork - that is, work that is produced with a playful attitude - at the centre of my research, I can build on the practice and pedagogy of this “joyous revolutionary” (Loste, 2008). Learning by Heart introduced me to plork, to creative rulesets and to understanding play through the lens of an artist, rather than an academic. As my research progresses, I can but hope that I can contribute in some small way to Corita’s joyous revolution.
References
Ten Rules [Online]. https://www.corita.org/. Available: https://www.corita.org/tenrules [Accessed 14-04-2023 2023].
BRAKHAGE, S. 1971. In Defence of Amateur. In: HALLER, R. A. (ed.) Brakhage scrapbook : collected writings, 1964-1980. New Paltz, NY: Documentext.
BURGHARDT, G. M. 2005. The genesis of animal play : testing the limits, Cambridge, Mass. ; London, MIT.
EBERLE, S. G. 2014. The Elements of Play: Towards a Philosophy and Definition of Play. Journal of Play, 6**,** 214-233.
HENRICKS, T. S. 2006. Play reconsidered : sociological perspectives on human expression, Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
HUIZINGA, J. 1949. Homo ludens; a study of the play-element in culture, London,, Routledge & K. Paul.
KENT, C. & STEWARD, J. 1992. Learning by heart, New York, Bantam Books.
LOSTE, B. 2008. Corita: A biography. In: STEWARD, J. (ed.) Learning by Heart. New York, NY: Allworth Press.
NØRGÅRD, R. T., TOFT-NIELSEN, C. & WHITTON, N. 2017. Playful learning in higher education: devleoping a signature pedagogy. International Journal of Play, 6**,** 272-282.
RUSSELL, W. & LESTER, S. 2008. Play for a change : play, policy and practice : a review of contemporary perspectives, London, National Children's Bureau.
List of Figures
Figure 1: NØRGÅRD, R. T. 2017. Signature pedagogy for playful learning in higher education. Playful learning in higher education: developing a signature pedagogy: International Journal of Play.
Figure 2: MEKELBURG, D. Corita Kent’s Rules & Hints for Students & Teachers. Learning by Heart: Allworth Press.