Product reviews for Dancing About Architecture

Phil Beadle's new book, Dancing About Architecture, is a well thought through testament to the power of creativity and the arts in education. Drawing on artists' thinking across disciplines, Phil explores how connecting seemingly disparate ideas results in work that can astound, inform and surprise. He encourages the educator to focus on process, not outcome, in much the same way that an artist focuses on process. This inevitably means taking risks if the process becomes the focus, then risk taking becomes something joyful and, ironically, risk free what does it matter if tangents happen when the outcome is not primary or set in stone?

Any educator that tries out the very practical and applicable ideas and resources in this accessible, and concise book will find themselves part of a journey of discovery with their students; they'll become a part of the process in a different, more immediate way; and even more pertinently, they'll get to experience the joy of creative thinking and practice and the endless possibilities it throws up. Phil respects and acknowledges the teacher as an intelligent, talented, creative individual and offers them the possibility of reclaiming the classroom as a place of possibility, more effective learning and exploration, free of the anxiety of the Ofsted inspection, that most bogus of pantomimes.

The kind of practice outlined in Dancing About Architecture means the whole student is engaged, mind and body. This is learning they'll retain because it engages all of them in unexpected and playful ways. The rigid hierarchy of what subjects 'matter' and the sheer aridity of sit-behind-a-desk-and-do-a-worksheet that's been set up by hundreds of years of academic hegemony is thrown into sharp relief as the nonsense that it is in this book. We were, as Phil points out, not evolved to sit behind a desk and do a worksheet. Personally, I can't think of anything more dreary.

The practice outlined in Dancing About Architecture is, ultimately, common sense. This book kicks the desks over, opens the windows and lets learning in it invites us to live life in a more joyful, human way. You won't regret giving it a go. Equally, anyone who is interested in the possibilities of how their child can be educated or in creative thinking, and especially those in the arts and especially those who happen teach in the arts, whether that's in a school or like myself, in an arts setting should give this a read. I've learnt a thing or two, and I've been working and teaching in the arts all of my adult life. In short, I highly recommend this book it's a guide to the bright future of education.