Design-oriented pedagogy with Kummunkoulu school:

Welcome to the Art Forest!

Welcome to the art forest! – is a project of Kummunkoulu from the city of Outokumpu, North Karelia, Finland. It is the result of collaboration between three primary school teachers and ENO Environment Online as the school is taking part of the ENO’s Sustainable Development via Co-creation project, which uses the principes of design-oriented pedagogy (DOP) during the autumn 2021. In short DOP is anchoring the learning process to children’s ideas, thinking, conceptions and interpretations about the phenomena in question. It encourages pupils, teachers and experts to innovate so that the learners themselves can design their approach towards the study. The questions are drawn from their natural wondering and the whole study process has a strong role in a form of study diary.

Welcome to the art forest -greeting

The idea

Nearby the school there is Matovaara forest and outdoor area which is excitingly beautiful forest with walking trails, hills, high trees, dense bushes, big stones etc. A perfect fairytale forest to let the imagination flow and transform it into an art forest. The students from 1C, 3A and 3C are inventing with their teachers and ENO Environment Online specialists interesting things for there to happen while exploring the forest more profoundly. The inspiration is drawn from the forest itself and the place is then eventually transformed into a common happening for the whole school.

3 Sep 2021 The start

ENO Environment Online personnel met the school’s teachers to talk about the interests and big lines. The teachers were all into the arts so the art based approach was a very easy decision; one favoured musical aspects, one visual and craft based methods and one was interested in shelter construction and free playing. An art forest concept was born.

19 Sep 2021 Hands on

ENO Environment Online educator met the classes in the Matovaara forest one by one. A walk in the forest was realised to widen the senses. The walk had small tasks for the students in every sense (vision, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching). Some of the tasks were made alone and some in small groups. Some of the things the students had to put in their memories and some were photographed. Some of the things the students could bring into classes as a souvenir like the scent box. The next step for the classes is to start realising or continue with their artworks based on the forest visits.

A forest as a source of inspiration: looking at it from different angles, observing the colours and forms, tasting, feeling and touching it. 

Reflection by 1C class

After the sense-walk the students of 1C class made writing and drawing exercises to reflect the experience in their project diaries. Here are some of them:

 3A -class creating a song

Kummunkoulu schools 3A-class is familiar with musical approaches and they decided to create a song for the Art forest -project. The song will eventually be performed in the Art forest event in some ways. Under the guidance of the teacher Mr. Tero Suihko the class made another visit to the forest in order to collect words for the song. After the sensory walk in the forest the 3A -class wrote also a short revision of the walk in their booklets. With the writings and a word list they started forming the song lyrics by writing short sentences in small groups. Here below you can see the wordlist collected from the forest and the phrases that will be used as lyrics for the song.

Huts and plays by 1C class