Creative Laboratories for Children
By Niyayesh Nahavandy – Multidisciplinary Artist & Educator

Childhood is a state of becoming, a liminal terrain where identity, perception, and creation dissolve into one another. In my creative laboratories, children are not merely taught—they are invited into a sensorial conversation with the world. Learning is not an external acquisition but an unfolding of presence, a process of embodying knowledge through movement, sound, and materiality. Art here is not a technique to be mastered but an experience to be lived, a way of attuning to the fluidity of being.

 

1. The Body as Storyteller

Before language solidifies thought, before concepts fix perception, the body speaks. In my laboratories, children enter the realm of somatic storytelling, where movement is not a performance but a revelation. A gesture holds the memory of the unseen, a shift in weight carries the residue of experience. They do not "act" a story—they become it, allowing narratives to emerge through them, written not in words but in the choreography of presence.

Movement improvisation becomes an act of deep listening, a return to an ancestral mode of expression where the body composes meaning in space. Each gesture is a threshold, a liminal crossing between the known and the unknown, where the self is not fixed but continually reimagined.

 

2. The Ritual of Play and the Theatre of Possibility

Play is the original philosophy, the first art, a space where objects and identities remain fluid, where a stick is not just a stick but an infinite potentiality—a sword, a wand, a brush painting unseen images in the air. My laboratories create a space for this multiplicity, where play becomes a ritual of transformation, a return to the theatre of primordial possibility.

Through shadow play, object theatre, and puppetry, we engage in the art of metamorphosis, slipping between selves and forms, merging with archetypes that have no fixed name. A flicker of light, the silhouette of a hand—these ephemeral presences become carriers of unspoken narratives, vessels of the imagination that transcend linear storytelling.

3. Nature as Text, Space as Score

The landscape is not a backdrop but a living entity, a text written in shifting patterns, rhythms, and silences. In my laboratories, children do not impose form upon the world—they enter into dialogue with it. Land art, ephemeral sculpture, and sensory mapping become ways of engaging with time itself—the slow decay of leaves, the shifting textures of water, the fleeting imprint of a footprint in the sand.

Here, creation is an act of attunement rather than control. The wind, the soil, the changing light shape the artwork as much as the child’s own hands, teaching patience, receptivity, and an awareness of impermanence. Each intervention in space is a negotiation, an offering rather than an imposition.

 

4. Sound as Embodied Memory

Before we understand words, we understand rhythm. The heartbeat of the mother, the resonance of lullabies, the vibration of sound against skin—these are our first encounters with presence. In my laboratories, sound is not merely heard; it is felt, lived, absorbed into the body’s archive of memory.

Through body percussion, improvised soundscapes, and sonic storytelling, children enter a realm where sound becomes a tactile, spatial experience. A whispered word can stretch time, a single tone can summon an entire landscape, a collective rhythm can dissolve the illusion of separateness. Sound here is not a medium but a bridge—a way of remembering our connection to one another and to the vibrational fabric of the world.

 

5. Art as Collective Dreaming

To create is to enter a shared field of becoming. In my laboratories, art is not an individual pursuit but a weaving of gestures, a constellation of traces left by many hands. A wall covered in layered markings, a journal passed between creators, a performance dissolving into a communal dance—these acts affirm that identity is not singular but relational, that expression is an ongoing conversation rather than a solitary declaration.

Through collective creation, children experience the dissolution of boundaries between “I” and “we,” understanding that creativity is not a possession but a fluid current moving between beings. Each mark made, each movement offered, extends beyond the self, merging into an evolving archive of shared presence.

 

6. The Stillness Between Movements

In a world obsessed with production and motion, stillness is a form of resistance, a radical act of attention. My laboratories embrace the spaces in between—the pause, the breath before the gesture, the silence between sounds.

Through mindful movement, dream journaling, and embodied reflection, children learn to listen to the whispers beneath the surface of things. To draw a memory with closed eyes, to let an emotion unfold through a single movement, to sit in stillness and dissolve into sound—these are practices of deep presence, portals into a more expansive way of sensing and knowing.

 

A Space for Becoming

My creative laboratories are not about transmitting skills but about awakening a way of being. They are invitations—to return to one’s own rhythms, to enter the poetic space of possibility, to experience learning as an unfolding rather than a destination. Here, art is not an object but an encounter, not a lesson but a lived experience. In this space, children do not merely create—they become the creation, the process itself, an ever-changing dance between self and world.