The joys of Transient Art

Transient art has been about for many years especially in early years education and involves giving children lots of different materials to work with so that they can create their own pictures which can be changed, modified and played around with. I remember being surprised when the children in the nursery where I worked created a beautiful picture only to then go on and paint or scribble over it ...the creative process had not ended for them it was transient. For young children it is more the doing than the finished product therefore transient art is ideal; it offers the opportunity for children to create and explore ideas without pressure and the non-permanent nature of their creation allows them to move, change, to experiment and to explore.
Transient art can take place both indoors and outdoors, the outdoors transient art is often called 'land art' and has been made popular by Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Shilling...google these artists for a better look. Land art uses resources from the earth and nature such as pine cones, sticks, leaves, stones, shells and logs to create amazing patterns and pictures.
Indoor transient art resources tend to be a combination of natural and manmade materials including glass beads, scrap materials, ribbons, pebbles, cones, seeds, shells, coloured aquarium gravel, seed pods, pompoms, feathers, craft sticks, metal nuts and bolts, wooden blocks, pieces of yarn, alphabet or numbers, tiny erasers ...even bottle tops. (source things at cheap pound shops, charity shops and car boot sales as well as from home 'junk'.
What do you need?
A space to create...either a table or floor, a paper surface, inside an old picture frame, on an old safety mirror or on a blank canvas.
Resources to create need to be accessible and mobile so that children can explore. It helps if they are displayed in baskets, trays or boxes and need to be seen by the child as an  'invitations to play'.
A digital camera if you want to record what the children have made it is best to make a photographic record.

Here are some images that might inspire you:

Images from Pintrest

Andy Goldsworthy creations