Bunny and the UFO

1. Propeller Arts produced Bunny and the UFO (BUFO) workshops and exhibition in collaboration with children at ArtPlay. BUFO is socially engaged art, and more narrowly, pedagogic art. Bishop notes that successful artistic collaborations do not exist in a vacuum or free space. They must have a structure and thematic content that provide participants with freedom and agency. The inquiry involved designing a project that provided children with a fruitful balance of creative agency and structure, in which children and artists could collaborate as equals. 2. Propeller Arts used constructivist pedagogy to engage the children as co-producers of the BUFO project. BUFFO is a clapping game, a form of children's playlore that is often devalued and ignored by adults (Factor 2004), played in the schoolyard and passed from child to child down generations. In workshops, children were invited to perform, teach and draw elements from clapping games. Thus the children became the experts and the artists their assistants, filming and animating their creative work. 3. BUFO builds on Propeller Arts' prior projects 1000 Tears, Bookends and Pride, Mischief and Murder. The BUFO workshops and exhibition were funded by a competitive New Ideas Lab grant ($14,285). ArtPlay houses 300 plus events every year, celebrating creative practice of all kinds, in which children experience art with world class artists. The value and impact of the BUFO research can be appreciated in the cultural capital created through the workshops and resulting exhibition. As a result of BUFO 56 children connected with one another through touch, rhythm and cooperation and with their carers via the nostalgia of childhood play. It also gave them a sense of pride and achievement to see their work online and in the public exhibition. The outcomes of the project were shared at the annual ArtPlay New Ideas Lab Artists Meeting and published in an article Interview with Propeller Arts on the ArtPlay website.