Prospect Archive of Children's Work
The Prospect Center for Education and Research, located in North Bennington, VT, started in 1965 as a school for elementary, and later, middle school children. The School closed in 1991 and the Center in 2010. Featured here are substantial, digitized selections of the work of nine students of the several hundred who attended the School. The School’s daily schedule included large blocks of time for its students to work with a broad range of materials individually and together, in self-directed ways. Visual and written work left behind was gathered and saved and eventually became the Prospect Archive of Children's Work, which now also contains teacher records and some subsequently donated work.
The Archive is a unique resource, offering a longitudinal perspective on children’s thinking and growth. It has been used for many years by teachers and other educators—employing methods for collaborative study developed at the Prospect Center—to further understanding of individual children, of children in school, of what in the educational setting supports their learning, and ultimately, of larger questions about human work, thought, and capacity. It is Prospect’s hope that the children’s work and supporting material on this site and in the Special Collections Library at UVM will be used by educators to continue their study in service to the idea that each child offers something new to the world, a fresh perspective, a renewed meaning, and that it is the work of education to enable that emergence.
This collection includes the work of nine individual children and The Introduction to the Reference Edition of the Prospect Archive (1985), which offers background and descriptions of the Prospect School, the Archive of Children’s Work, and the Reference Edition itself, from which all the children’s work and related material on this site have been drawn. The Reference Edition of the Prospect Archive is a slide, microfiche and manuscript compilation of the complete works of thirty-six children. Note: The convention of parentheses around the children’s names indicates a pseudonym.
The Prospect Center for Education and Research, located in North Bennington, VT, started in 1965 as a school for elementary, and later, middle school children. Out of its own efforts to learn more about children and how best to provide for and encourage their learning, the Prospect School grew to encompass a variety of teacher education programs, research projects, and an archive of children’s work and transformed itself into the Prospect Center in 1979. The School closed in 1991. The Center continued some of its adult education and research activities, and undertook an ambitious publication program, until its closing in 2010.
Showing 1 - 10 of 11 Records
(Iris)
- Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
- Date Created: 2008-09-11
- Description: (Iris’) original collection in the Archive spans 8 years, 1978-1986, from ages 5 years to 12 years and 9 months. The full collection contains 1,544 items, which are reproduced on microfiche in the Reference Edition. (Iris’) work is full of people. Both the visual work and writing reveal a deep sense of wonder about human activity, the internal life of people and the nature of relationships. (Iris’) figures are highly expressive, full of movement and emotion. (Iris) captures human qualities, like wickedness, in details of clothing, hairstyle and facial expression. Portraits of striking women appear throughout the work, some with mysterious, dream-like qualities. (Iris) also tells stories, first with drawings of favorite fairy tales, then writing her own. Houses also appear. Drawings of exteriors show an interest in structure and design, and cross-sections revealing the “story” of each room through furnishings and activities of characters. Houses also hold secrets, concealed staircases, and hidden treasure. Humor runs through the visual work and writing with a particular emphasis on mischief and trickery. Drawings made with marker and pencil predominate. The line is quite varied, and color ranges from vibrant to drab. Painted landscapes and perspective appear later. (Iris) uses a form, the arch, for multiple purposes. It appears as window, door, face, and repeated pattern. (Iris’) writing begins as simple journal entries about school, friends and family. Over time it expands to include poems and other reflective pieces on time, change, history, war and peace, and the natural world. There are also lengthy serialized stories. Conversation, and especially dialogue, dominates the writing during (Iris’) fifth year (age 9). Stories read like scripts. In the later years, poetry becomes a means of expressing complex moral/philosophical ideas concerning human nature, which remains a persistent interest for (Iris).
- Parent Collections: Prospect Archive of Children's Work
(Leo)
- Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
- Date Created: 2008-09-11
- Description: (Leo’s) original collection in the Archive spans 10 years, 1975-1985, ages 4 years and 11 months to 14 years and 8 months. The full collection contains 1,907 items, which are reproduced on microfiche in the Reference Edition. (Leo) primarily used markers to create narratives in line, with color highlighting or adding to the action. Narratives are often adventures, voyages, journeys, or paths of discovery, including encounters with the unexpected. Mapping, large space, and distance are characteristic of the settings in which adventures occur, with copious detail and motion as well as extreme variation in the line unifying the work. (Leo) appears to be gathering, recording, and explicating experience. Treatment of scenes implies events preceding and following, as opposed to studies of single moments. Over the 10 years, (Leo’s) work evinces increasing interest in and capacity for control and precision of line and decrease in ambiguity about space and perspective. Cartooning begins to appear in year 5, linear perspective in year 6, humorous treatment of previously serious subjects in years 7 and 8, with more character study, less narrative, and increased range of mediums and of color and form in years 8 and 9. (Leo’s) early written stories are transcribed from dictation, often as captions for the adventure drawings. As he increasingly writes the stories down himself, he continues adventure stories in a variety of settings, often blending elements from history, folklore, or legend. He also writes descriptions, reports, and opinion essays. Humor permeates much of his writing (including word play, captioned cartoons, exploration of idioms). His later adventure stories are full of action and conflict, with detailed and descriptive language.
- Parent Collections: Prospect Archive of Children's Work
(Alva)
- Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
- Date Created: 2008-09-11
- Description: (Alva's) original collection in the Archive spans eight years, 1976-1985, ages 5 to 13. The full collection contains 952 items, which are reproduced on microfiche in the Reference Edition. The collection stands out for (Alva's) attention to composition. She uses boundaries, framing, corner treatments, and lines to divide the space of a page. Pattern, repetition, symmetry, and layering appear across the collection and within individual pieces. Lines, bands, panels, and columns recur, with a preference for the vertical, but also intersecting lines and bands. (Alva) uses a variety of media, including chalk, cray-pas, pencil, crayon, colored pencil, watercolor, tempera, printing, rubbings, marbling, and collage, and she mixes media within a piece of work. Consistent motifs include natural and outdoor scenes, animals (often in groups), hills, suns, water, houses with trees and flowers, bursts of color, and patterned or geometric forms. Vivid color permeates the visual collection. Much of (Alva's) written work deals with relationship, with strong feeling at the core. The strength of feeling is contained by a style that is structured and attentive to detail and by a straightforward tone. Animals (especially horses and mice) in her written work experience changes of relationship and feeling. Relationships among people are explored as well, and in her later work values of equality and justice come to the fore.
- Parent Collections: Prospect Archive of Children's Work
(Neil)
- Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
- Date Created: 2008-09-11
- Description: (Neil’s) original collection in the Archive covers 9 years, 1970-1979, ages 5 years and 2 months to 13 years and 11 months. The full file of originals numbers 324 visual items and 186 written items, which are reproduced on microfiche in the Reference Edition. (Neil’s) work is notable for these persistent themes: mapping, overview and landscape; patterning, and schematics; machinery and equipment, both invented and realistic; mystery and hiddenness; adventure, conflict, and threats of danger; dwellings, both interiors and exteriors, home, representing safety and comfort; subtle humor running throughout work; deep interest in nature. Some enduring characteristics of his style include preference for line,particularly pencil; outline, but also selective and fine details and shading; humorous inventiveness both in machinery and people in costumes and poses; interest in tools and history; color used sparingly for emphasis; and rhythm and movement conveyed within compositions. An overall characteristic is his eye for detail and upbeat approach. Changes in his work are characterized by a growing variety and range of content; increased use of other mediums, including pastels and water color; bright colors, geometric design; a light, impressionistic touch, as well as realistic illustrations of texts; more writing: long travel/adventure narratives that end in safe refuge at home; story development with understated emotion, and dry humor.
- Parent Collections: Prospect Archive of Children's Work
(Sean)
- Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
- Date Created: 2008-09-11
- Description: (Sean’s) collection spans nine years, 1971-1980, ages 4 years and 9 months to 13 years and 6 months. The collection contains 1,140 items, which are reproduced in full on microfiche in the Reference Edition. (Sean’s) work is marked by a spirit of experimentation, a sense of the artist himself as a medium, and continuing preoccupation with such ideas as transformation, doubleness, reversibility, magic, trickery, disaster and rescue, the hidden world, and befallenness. In visual work, (Sean) used every physical medium available, from paint to prints, photography, and sewing, with preference given to plain pencil. His experimental attitude is further visible in lots of reworking and preliminary and marginal sketches. He is a virtuoso of line; his rare use of color is charged. In both visual and written work, work within the same year veers from great sophistication to less accomplished pieces. Overall, he seems to privilege experimentation over finished statements. Figures are singular, generic. The eye and the self-portrait are two continuous, striking motifs in visual work. Mirroring, images within images (a hand drawing a picture), figure-ground ambiguity, and forms of trickery, punning, magic, and tantalizing/provocative ambiguity, often with an edge of sly humor, are characteristic. In writing, (Sean) also practiced many genres. Unnamed, singular characters and un-located events abound—the boy, the deer, the lady, the cowboy, the river. His language is spare and economical, with occasional stunning adjectives. Action consists of movement and progress is dream-like. Compositional structure is by repetition, recurrence, parallelism, alternation or reversals, which often confuse figure and ground. In the later years, a new lyricism appears, especially in watercolors of land- and seascapes, or, in writing, descriptions of nature.
- Parent Collections: Prospect Archive of Children's Work
(Gus)
- Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
- Date Created: 2008-09-11
- Description: (Gus’) original collection in the Archive spans 8 years, 1972-1980, ages 5 years and 4 months to 13 years and 4 months. The full collection contains 870 items, which are reproduced on microfiche in the Reference Edition. Houses and dwellings are prominent in (Gus’) work, often elaborated with strong color applied in contiguous blocks or patterns ofstripes or grids, with variations in chimneys and other elements that indicate the form is a structure for variation. Ghosts, monsters, robots, and vehicles appear in his work, although with inattention or ambiguity as to setting or narrative. He experiments with ways of using visual media to represent invisible forces in physics and spirit. In pictures and stories, sports and popular culture are a motif. In stories, as well as in visual work, there can be a shift from the particular and present, to a more ambiguous space/time. An implied largeness is worked, as it were meditatively, through ordered repetition and variation of color or elements. Number, pattern, and color are important and serve as means of relationship, though relationship may also be conveyed by, for example, a tree leaning into another. The largeness and general absence of story or continuous action evoke a sense of archetypal forms or ideas and of incipience, beginning, or promise. Non-figurative work is particularly abundant at ages 8-9, 10-11, and 12-13. The quantity of visual work falls off in the last two years of the collection, but suggests involvement with large ideas of space, time, and spirit. His production of writing increases somewhat. In writing and in visual works, he explores themes of world citizenry and personal self-determination. His writing style remains lean, spare.
- Parent Collections: Prospect Archive of Children's Work
(Mick)
- Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
- Date Created: 2008-09-11
- Description: (Mick’s) original collection in the Archive spans eight years, 1975-1983, ages five to thirteen. The full collection contains 2,511 items, which are reproduced on microfiche in the Reference Edition. (Mick’s) persisting preferences include multiple fields of action covering vast expanses, sometimes covering both sides of a large sheet of newsprint; overviews, often with huge sky and tiny figures; and cross-sectional views depicting actions on the surface of the water and below; in writing, stories may be told from two perspectives. Gesture and intensity is depicted in energetic activity with favored motifs being sports and physical activity including kickball, skiers, motorcyclists, soldiers, Vikings, explosions, bursts, and swirls of brilliant color. Action often exceeds the boundaries of the page and ground lines tend to be omitted. In counterpoint, there is a penchant for precision and detail as in maps, diagrams, football grids, insignia, uniforms, and equipment. In play with this attention to detail is an emphasis on practice in both visual and written work. Vikings have a storehouse for their supplies and practice their swordplay. (Mick) himself practices forms and shapes that serve multiple purposes: an extended “v” shape, upright or on its side used for the legs of kicks and the prow of a ship. Ships, houses, and trees recur across the collection. Writing about animals introduces most directly an element of sweetness that can be inferred elsewhere. Humor, verbal play, visual jokes, and verbal facility span the collection. Later works, especially landscape paintings, have a lyricism not visible earlier. Writing as a preferred medium takes off at age nine, producing adventure stories, drama, and descriptive writing.
- Parent Collections: Prospect Archive of Children's Work
(Emma)
- Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
- Date Created: 2008-09-11
- Description: (Emma’s) original collection in the Archive spans nine years, 1976-1985, ages 5 to almost 14. The full collection contains 1588 items, which are reproduced on microfiche in the Reference Edition. (Emma's) work is colorful; characteristically these colors are lush rather than primary and the color combinations can be offbeat. Small imaginary worlds, landscapes, and, from her third year of school on, abstract designs (symmetric early on, later more syncopated), are favorite subjects. A charged atmosphere is sometimes created through such means as scribbled lines or transparency. “Light shining through” recurs. Her style includes fine but quick detail and qualities of lyricism and rhythm along with humor. The consistency across the collection is part of the evidence of persistence, of sustained effort. Each year shows increasing technical command of a widening range of media, with an explosion of productivity and emotional power in the later years. The later years include many drawings from life. (Emma’s) unassigned writing throughout the file is often in the style of a fairy tale in which (Emma) is the storyteller describing small worlds, magical transformations. There are also reports of historical events retold in quick, conversational style. Poetry and fictional work often rely on a strong sense of animation, sometimes making subjects out of colors or mundane objects, often in the context of family-like relationships. Some of the later writing shows a more self-reflective side. Throughout the file there is a breathless vivaciousness.
- Parent Collections: Prospect Archive of Children's Work
(Virginia)
- Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
- Date Created: 2008-09-11
- Description: (Virginia’s) original collection in the Archive spans 10 years, 1974-1984, ages 4 years and 6 months to 14 years. The full collection contains 2,185 items, which are reproduced on microfiche in the Reference Edition. (Virginia’s) work is notable for its high-intensity, high-detail depictions of homes and other settings filled with light, and for the lavish, intricate, and colorful detail with which she adorns her figures and settings, both interior and exterior. Home and family figure largely and so do courts and royalty, fairy tale and myth. Relationships between people are expressed through varied body postures and facial expressions. Her writing is often bound up with her visual work, telling dramatic stories of home relationships, adventures, royalty and myth, lively with conversation. Works call to mind illuminated manuscripts, in their close connection between visual art and written expression. She was a prolific drawer, often with marker. The characterizations of her figures and the explicitness of the settings generally imply the telling of a story. Valuing of competence, in part conveyed by knowledgeable depiction of tools and in part by the artist’s own skill with various mediums, toughens the emphasis on drama and relationship, and humor heightens the spirit of the work. Decorative and functional detail grow during the first six years of the collection. The visual work becomes simpler thereafter, with more instances of a single girl in a setting in year 7 (age 11) and more variety of relationships and emotions around age 12. By age 13, there is overall simplification of content and design and work with a widening range of mediums. Fantasy decreases in the later writing, with more probing of deep feelings and big ideas, more personal reflection. Narrative increases in complexity, further extending richness of detail.
- Parent Collections: Prospect Archive of Children's Work