Delanie Holton-Fessler - Maker Camp: Heritage Crafts and Skill-Building Projects for Kids

Education is radically about love.

Paulo Freire

There are two things that mean the most to me: people and putting my hands to work. I couldnt imagine life without connection to others nor a life without making. I was the child who was always drawing, always putting something together; and in my youth I loved playing in the woods and being in nature. I believe that my art teachers and an out-of-school arts program in Boulder kept me afloat as a teenager struggling with big life stuff. As a young adult, I went to art school, managed the sculpture studio, studied education, and actively participated in the creative world here in Denver. I then continued working as an artist and started my career as an art teacher in high-poverty schools. In that time, I found that being a trustworthy caregiver was at the core of all of the work I do with kids. A person has to feel safe and loved before they can tap their creative brain. Knowing that all of my work is relationship-driven, I then spent the last five years running my community-based workshop, The Craftsman & Apprentice, as a testing ground for everything that I believed to be true about working with kids.

Working with children and being a mother have been my lifes greatest work. I feel immensely grateful that Ive been able to engage with thousands of kids from many different backgrounds and abilities. Theres nothing like bearing witness to a child in flow. The hard parts of life melt away, and there we are, in the moment, creating something new. It doesnt get much better than that.

I also believe that kids and adults deserve to work and live in beautiful and functional spaces and that they deserve to have ample time to make, play, and learn. I believe deeply in relationship-driven learning, and now I get to share all of my favorite projects, philosophy, and more with you. I challenge you as you read this book, as caregivers of the amazing things called children, to reflect on your own childhood. What are the moments that positively defined you? Who were those people who made you feel whole and trusted? How can you set the stage for the little people in your life to have those moments of definition and trust?

Our ideas, behaviors, and passions change over time. My thoughts about art education have changed profoundly over the years. What I now know is that in addition to traditional fine arts education, theres a world that many children are missing. You may still be old enough to remember home economics and shop class, where we learned practical skills and how to work safely and create items of use. We learned how to take care of our homes and one another. How are we teaching our children these skills? Through the seemingly antiquated notion of arts and crafts, we practice at life, we make life more beautiful, and we connect to one another. Lets get our hands dirty, make mistakes, and bring back some good old-fashioned making and doing.

Why do we create? This is a big question, but one with a simple answer. Were human. Our innate ability to create and innovate is what makes us uniquely human. From a very early age, children build. Give a stack of blocks to a one-year-old and they will stack and sort. This simple process is a foundational example of how our brains are hardwired to create. Play is the earliest form of creativity. Children take familiar objects and use them in new and innovative ways. This process allows children to decode their world, to discover through play the way things work and how simple objects and materials can be combined to produce new and novel expressions.

I often hear from adults, Im just not creative. Somewhere along the line, many adults failed at making something, they failed to have access to creative outlets, they failed to be told that its okay to make things that arent perfect. Maybe the concept of creativity as it pertains to the creation of objects wasnt valued in their home or community. If youre one of those adults, its not too late. Its not too late to build your creative skills, to empower yourself to create objects. I find no better way to reinforce my maker self than to make things with kids. Kids have an amazing ability to act without the self-conscious mind telling them that what theyre doing isnt good enough. Kids have the innate ability to work in process, to disregard the outcome in favor of the experience of creation. We as adults, as concrete thinkers, can take a cue from the playful nature of children to reengage the innate playful curiosity that were all born with. And bonus, kids arent harsh critics. They love what you do. They love that youre just trying.

What I love most about making things with children is that I am reminded each day that were all learning. Being creative isnt an endgame but rather a way of being. Its messy, its full of failure and success, and if given the right circumstances and frame of mind, its so much fun.

The aim of this book is to help all children build skills that will enable them to be confident creators no matter where life takes them as adults. Not everyone is going to be a painter, a weaver, or a woodworker, but were all tasked with problems to solve. I firmly believe that when we teach children to work with their hands, to tinker, and to play, we teach them to trust themselves, to trust their own intuition, and to solve problemsjust as humans have always done. We humans are meant to be makers.