At Play in the Atelier

For several years in the mid 2000s, I taught in a Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool. My co-teacher and I set out “invitations” each morning for the children. These invitations were born of our observations—our goal wasn’t to drive the children toward an arbitrary learning goal, but to deepen the questions that we’d noticed them asking. So the marvel of a muddy playground on Tuesday might lead on Wednesday to a plastic bin filled with dirt and a bucket of water set out as an invitation.

My co-teacher and I gathered supplies from a room called the atelier. This space looked like an enchanted recycling center. There were bins of empty yogurt containers, piles of found scrap metal, almost empty cans of interior paint gifted to the school by parents who’d finished remodeling projects. The room was strung with fairy lights and intention. It was carefully tended by the atelierista.

Most mornings, the atelierista set out invitations for the teachers. In a Reggio Emilia school, a community-wide conversation occurs through art and experiential learning. Adults aren’t left out and neither are pre-verbal/non-verbal students (or non-verbal adults.) The primary language of the school is engagement.

Writing is as an act of engagement. We have questions that we yearn to follow and deepen. Writing isn’t a bin of dirt and a bucket of water, but it’s not not that either: the dirt of our past, the water of our emotions. We seek deeper relationship with our memories, our curiosities, our pain points, our secrets, our delights and desires, our fiercest hungers.

This month, consider what it means to keep your own atelier, to be your own atelierista, to create your own invitations. I find it worthwhile to court my pre-verbal wisdom, to allow not only my intellect but also my body—my senses—to engage with what haunts me. Knowledge is constructed slowly.

With that, the generative writing exercise for this month: altar building! An altar is an invitation for adults, and in the process of building an altar we do the work of teacher, student, and atelierista.

There are as many ways to create an altar as there are questions in the world. This is simply one invitation for you!

Creating an Altar for Your Work in Progress*

Part One: Gathering Materials

1. Consider a piece of writing that you’ve already begun or would like to begin. Allow your thoughts about this work to settle in your body. Where do you feel it? What sensations do you experience? Do you sense a texture, a color, a smell, a taste?

2. Walk through your house holding these feelings in your body. Pick up things that catch your eye. Ask each item how it relates to your work and see what sort of answers you get.

3. Ask each item if it might like to be on the altar you’re creating for this work. If it says yes, carry it with you as you continue to engage your environment.

4. Repeat steps 2-3 outside.

Part Two: Constructing the Altar

1. An altar can be any size. It can take up the top of a bookshelf or be contained on a drink coaster next to your computer. It can be taped to a wall using wall-safe tape. Pick your location.

2. Arrange your items around you and again bring your work to mind. Allow yourself to feel your work in your body. The sensations may or may not have changed.

3. Set up your altar. Hold each item. Recall why that item wanted to be a part of your altar. What, if anything, has changed for you? For the item? You may or may not use all of the items you gathered. You may need to gather additional items. There’s no right or wrong here.

4. Place items. Rearrange items. Repeat.

5. You’ll know your altar is ready when you look at it and see a visual representation of your work.

Part Three: Tending the Altar.

1. This altar is an experiential communication with your work in progress, so engage with it freely. Keep it clean. Rearrange it. Give it gifts—candles, flowers, glitter, chocolate, prayers, incense, the pages you wrote the day before. Anything really.

2. At any point, you can engage in free writing exercises with your altar. I often find it helpful to start a writing session with a free writing exercise. Here are some ideas:

   • Select one of the items from your altar. Set a timer for five or ten minutes. Write without stopping from the point of view of this item.

   • Select one of the items from your altar. Write a specific question about your work at the top of your page. Set a timer for five or ten minutes. Write without stopping and answer the question you’ve written from the point of view of the item you selected.

   • Select one of the items from your altar. Set a timer for five or ten minutes. Write without stopping on what happens to your work when that item and all it represents is removed.