Last Thursday was the first meeting of Aycorn east, arts and young children regional network. I delivered a workshop alongside presentations by Charlottle Arculus of Magic Adventure and Joy Haynes of Norwich Puppet Theatre. 

In the east of England we have a wealth of enthusiasm, expertise and appetite for high quality early years arts practice, across all art forms.  This network will hopefully grow to include other venues, artists, nurseries and organisations with passion for this exciting and crucial sector. 

You can find Aycorn East on Facebook and Twitter to get updates on future events. 

This photo was taken near the end of my workshop. We are all lying on the floor looking up at the extraordinary "thing" we have just made. Tower workshops are not only a great way to work with young children but are a fantastic team building, ice breaking, mind opening activity for everyone. 

So many magic moments from yesterday's Planet UV at Norwich Puppet Theatre. Watching two brothers playing with shredded paper for nearly half an hour was well worth the spectacular art installation called "Mess" that was created as result of these children playing! 

One grandparent, that was there with their grandchild, said " It's lovely seeing children being allowed to just play with stuff, no learning objectives as such but they are learning loads! " 

A childminder who brought some children along said it was the best pre-school workshop she had been to and has booked for the next one in December!

I am of course immensely proud to get such feedback but it's not everyone's cup of tea to have such open ended play. And it does look like chaos to the untrained eye, but on closer inspection everybody was exploring, inventing, experimenting and playing at their own pace and in their own ways. 

Many thanks to Norwich Puppet Theatre who have encouraged me to deliver these creative play sessions. I'm really looking forward to the next ones! 

This activity is an extension of  "taking a line for a walk". 

Here we have parents and children working together, but it could be suitable for same age groups as well. One of you holds the pen and is passive, the other holds their hand and takes it and the pen for a walk around the page. After a minute or two swap roles. 

It is a really interesting exercise. Dominant personalities can struggle with letting go, and followers get the opportunity to take the lead. Working with families it is apparent that the adult is not always the dominant party and vice versa, so it provides a really good level playing field where we can step out of our usual roles, whatever they might be.

This is just one shot from probably 1300 I took at the Early Arts UnConference this week. I will be making them into a short film of sorts soon. It was lots of fun, as you can see, but there was also a lot of debate and discussion about early years practice and creativity. All good stuff. Got the brain whirring and buzzing and looking for more! 

Just parking this here, even though it makes me cringe, as I might want to refer to it later. 

Really nice take on what it means to be creative. I was signposted to this from an early years music forum I'm a member of and it was originally from Ignite!Futures. I haven't looked at their website in detail but when I get the chance I will definitely take a closer look. 

"We refer to these attributes as the characteristics of creativity:

1. Resilience – the capacity to tolerate confusion and ambiguity and to learn through trial and error;
2. Resourcefulness – knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do, and having different thinking strategies;
3. Reflection – being able to observe and document your own thinking;
4. Relationships – the capacities to see and make connections, and develop more than one meaning or possibility;
5. Risk-taking - the appetite for challenge, developing an eclectic curiosity and exploring new unfamiliar territory"

I can relate to all of these as part of my creative process and most notably at the moment "Resilience"; I am tolerating a lot of confusion and ambiguity at the moment!