This blog post is written by Charlotte Megroureche who is doing her PHD on ‘Merging mathematics + art, in informal education’ with Heald Place Primary School.

I am a PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University and my doctoral research has recently led me to work in collaboration with the Whitworth Gallery on a series of workshops to be run with primary school children. The workshops were conducted in the Learning Studio and designed to allow children to explore mathematical and artistic ideas through small creative projects. The activities will contribute to reflections around my doctoral project which focuses on the potential of what we have called (un)fitness in mathematics and arts. The term designates a broad range of concepts which are commonly considered superfluous or detrimental to mathematical or artistic work, particularly at school level. These concepts include errors, ambiguities, uncertainties or paradoxes. Our use of the term (un)fitness will help us to talk about different elements that generate surprises by their particularities and singularities. What we witnessed in workshops was a wide array of responses to the tasks set, many of which broke with our original ideas as well as common assumptions and norms of the practices, such as non-orthogonal weavings and those without alternating patterns. This open creative exploration of what is given in a task, from the materials to the instructions or concepts introduced, is characteristic of children of the age range we have worked with and will help to develop the ideas of the thesis by presenting ways that value is created through an open engagement with (un)fit ideas. Here are some examples of the students’ creations during these sessions where we created patterns through paper weaving and drew self-portraits onto mirrors.