Invention as a working attitude: Jeske connects art, education, and research
What happens if you keep searching for new ways to understand things? For Jeske Fricker, that is the core of how she works. She is in the second year of the Master’s Education in Arts at ArtEZ and works as a teacher of expressive pedagogy and as an artist-researcher at the professorship of Mental Health Care and Society at Windesheim. In addition, she works as a substitute teacher for a primary school class, makes wooden toys, and composes music.
Everything she does revolves around inventing: making connections between disciplines, trying out new forms, and continuing to explore what else is possible.
What preschoolers show about learning and inventing
As a substitute teacher, Jeske regularly teaches kindergarten classes. There, she sees something that she believes often gets lost as we grow older. “For young children, nothing is self-evident - they question everything. They really don’t just do something because it’s the way things are done.” In the classroom, this shows up in simple but fundamental questions. “What happens to this day when it’s over? Where does it go? Preschoolers will always keep asking. Why, why, why.”
According to Jeske, there is an important lesson in this for professionals and organizations as well. “Many adults take things for granted or think they’re done learning. That sometimes makes me feel constrained.” Preschoolers do the opposite. “They are constantly exploring the boundaries of what is possible.”
That openness and the ability to keep investigating often fade into the background later in life. That is precisely why Jeske uses art education to bring back that way of seeing and to keep exploring the complexity of the world.
Wooden toys that bring learning and making together
This inquisitive attitude is also reflected in her wooden toys. It started with her grandfather, who was a woodworking teacher. “Even as a child, I was always fascinated by it.”
Jeske began working with the material herself to get to know it. “Sometimes I want to make something in a certain way, but the wood doesn’t cooperate. It splits or breaks. Then I have to let go of my plan and look again: what is this material actually asking of me? In those moments, you’re forced to think differently and look for new solutions.”
She developed, among other things, a series of wooden spinning tops. “I wanted to create something in which different disciplines come together.” With these tops, you work on fine motor skills, but there is more behind it. “If you paint multiple colors on a top and spin it, those colors blend optically. In this way, you can playfully learn something about basic color theory.”
She connects this to music theory. “The structure of the color wheel and musical systems, such as the circle of fifths, resemble each other. When you overlay them, you start to see relationships between colors and tones.” The tops can therefore be used during music improvisation or composition. “For me, it’s a form of art to make this as intuitively accessible as possible for others.” According to her, wooden toys lend themselves well to this. “They have a kind of simplicity - and that’s exactly where their strength lies.”
Artistic research: what you can’t access with words
Jeske works as a teacher and artist-researcher at Windesheim and is also conducting her graduation research within the Teachers College. There, she collaborates with students and stakeholders on a question that is recognizable for many organizations: what do you do when a lot is going on, but the conversation about it doesn’t happen?
“In many situations, you can feel that there is tension, but the dialogue about it is not initiated.” Instead of only analyzing the factual content of conversations, she chooses a different approach. “For example, we write an open-ended fairy tale that represents the situation and present it to those involved, asking them to respond.” These responses can take any form. “Some respond in words, others in images.” Together, these responses form new input for further research. “Instead of searching for one shared language, this creates a conversation in which different perspectives can exist side by side and come into their own.”
She also uses music as a research tool. Making music together, she says, has a depolarizing effect. “You are not standing opposite each other, but exploring the issue together. Music, like research, is always moving somewhere.” In the creative process, she explores with those involved both the current situation and a desired one, and how that movement can take shape musically. “For example, do you need different voices or timbres? Or do existing structures need to be let go?”
By bringing together these musical “poems” from different participants into one composition, a musical dialogue emerges. “You can hear where there is friction or where things actually come together.”
Art education as a way of seeing differently
What Jeske learns in the Master’s Education in Arts gives words to what she was already doing. In her research, artistic practice, and teaching, she uses the same approach: asking questions, experimenting, and bringing together different perspectives. “You don’t always see this way of working reflected in how organizations are structured. By working with stories, materials, and music, space is created to approach issues in a different way.”
For Jeske, that is where the value of art education lies. “The artistic approach yields different insights than traditional research. It brings to the surface what normally remains hidden and makes it tangible and discussable for people. At the same time, you create space for what is not yet fixed. It often starts small, by not immediately jumping to solutions, but first continuing to observe and ask questions. Just like a preschooler does.”
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