Pursuing Questions
Welcome to Pursuing Questions: Imprints of inquiry, possibilities for play, and provocations for living. This is a podcast, formerly known as The Playful Podcast, is for those cultivating an ethos towards mutual flourishing, healing, learning and living well throughout the human experience; and that is the vision for this space. Guided by 5 values and 3 intentions, what might be encounter?
Intentions:
Imprints of inquiry: I wish to capture traces of my journey, because I believe it is worthy of being studied. critiqued, and expanded upon. I aim to cultivate my own awareness, reflection, and empowerment in moving my practice. What I say here is a landmark in time; not meant to be absolute truth, rather, to be interpreted within the context discussed. Podcasting is a tool for collecting and archiving pedagogical moments, thought, decisions, and practice.
Possibilities for play: I strive to expand the potential of parallel practices, by "going public" with incomplete ideas to seek feedback, to embrace questioning and being questioned, and to practice sharing knowledge generously. I believe that through knowledge sharing we are nudged towards improvising and playing with new ideas. Much of what I share is in a light-hearted spirit of saying "yes" to what is offered my way, and responding as best I can from a playful place.
Provocations for living: I take up long-term inquiries about fostering playful dispositions, pursuing human and more-than-human well-being, mutual flourishing, reflecting on practice as a facilitator, broadening relationships with knowledge, highlighting the value to revisiting experiences, playing with ideas, and unraveling pedagogy to inspect its ideals, protagonists, and assumptions. What I share is meant to be generative, to activate possibility and life itself by provoking, expanding, and spiralling that which is most compelling within a pursuit.
Values:
Curiousity: curiousity is my compass. I ask questions and work from a place of pursuing curiosity over compliance, normalcy, or or acceptance. I believe in living the questions, now.
Interconnection: Although I often prefer the term interdependence, my value of interconnection is what guides me towards pursuing connection, always, and lead through connection. I value serendipity, linking ideas, relationships, knowing that we are all connected in multitudes.
Reciprocity: I believe in sharing knowledge generously, making thinking available and accessible, and aiming to live in a world where we receive and give openly. I believe in modelling the kind of offerings I hope others to generate as well.
Wisdom: I believe in entering into embodied relationship with wisdom, as lived, rather than consuming and producing facts or information. I consider lived experience and generational knowledge to be as valued as reliable data, and as such, this podcast is not trying to elevate my work to a hard science; rather, declare its legitimacy as living wisdom and insight.
Upwards Spirals: Joy. Flow. Play. Revisiting. Repetition. Deepening. "Again"....I believe in pursuing the paths towards, and ingredients that, sustain upwards spirals of flourishing, passion, pursuit, and drive. Our nervous systems are hard-wired to detect threat and our instinct is to survive, and as a society we have put so many resources into correcting the undesirable. To compensate for some of these patterns, I believe we need intentional rituals of gratitude and generativity, and a practice of studying what "works". To do so, I believe in starting from a place of what "is," which is so often what "was" and what "will be": the patterns in our thought, behaviour, and emotion that cause us to wonder, repeat, and pursue. Noticing and attuning to our own spirals can support deepened intention, awareness, and joyful pursuit grounded in what we already know, value, and have affinity for.
Pursuing Questions
Spiralized Experiences: What can the shape of a spiral offer us within our human experience?
In this mini-episode I capture several thoughts I've had over the past several years that have led me to absolutely revere spirals as metaphors in my personal and professional life.
I'd like to give a generous shout-out to the content creators of the music in this episode.
For show notes and transcript, visit: https://playfulpedagogies.ca/2023/04/04/spiralized-experiences-what-can-the-shape-of-a-spiral-offer-us-within-our-human-experience/
Welcome to the Playful podcast, where we discuss lifelong learning and leisure by lingering at the intersection of recreation, education, and occupation. I'm your host, Kim Barton. Welcome to the journey. I'm excited to play and learn along with you. So if you haven't noticed, I've rebranded my podcast a little bit, and in one of my recent episodes I'll be talking about why I've moved towards. The title Playful podcast and in this episode I'm shedding some light on the new design, which includes many as spirals. Spirals have become quite the meaningful metaphor in my life as well, both personally and professionally. And so in this little snippet, I just share a brief little bit of insight as to why I think they're relevant to early learning and how we can think about spirals in a very generative way. So without further ado, here you go.
I think in Western society we have this idea that cycles and growth are somehow. Antonyms or opposite? But the fascinating thing about life is that it all happens in cycles. If you look at the structure of. Growth. It often actually happens in a spiralized fashion. And certainly in a nonlinear way. And so we're not doing ourselves service. By thinking that the metaphor of a cycle or a spiral is always something that we're caught in or that we're. We're regressing in. I think that. The most learning happens when we revisit experiences and when we act out the same patterns over and over again. The only way to find movement is to find ourselves in those moments, time and time again, and incrementally. Have the conditions to try something slightly different and different. Isn't the opposite of a spiral either, because once again. Difference and change often happens by ...like picture an unfurling leaf, or the cap of a wave, or a tornado or the horns on on. Animals, like the strongest structures in nature do include spirals and it's also such a natural shape so. Can we change our perspective that experiencing a cycle is is somehow limiting or stunting us, when really I think it's the exact opposite? The other thing. I want to mention is I think we have this. Connotation of spirals with like a downward spiral or being caught in the cycle. But I think spirals represent so many different things they represent. The value of of returning and revisiting, they represent that learning and growth is never complete. It's actually infinite. It never ends. They represent the value of nonlinear wandering. And this this way of all things being in orbit. You know, wander away but also return. And then again just this this association with how we can understand the value of a shape that a spiral offers to both physically understand the world but also metaphorically understand. Some of the emotional and philosophical experiences we have.
Thanks so much for listening. You can find me on social media at playful pedagogies and as always, stay playful.