Top: Kristin Eno in the kitchen, which is full of recycled and repurposed materials. Bottom: Early childhood educators Ana Barragan and Ashley Portillo. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Ana Barragan and Ashley Portillo scanned the shelves of a turn-of-the-century kitchen, not sure exactly what they would find. In cabinets that once held bowls and drinkware, spools of ribbon, discarded shoelaces, bits of thread and half-used skeins of yarn filled tupperware containers, pushed neatly shoulder-to-shoulder. Extra fabric, folded and arranged by color, had appeared where plates lived in another life. Over the stove, pink and red plastic yokes had become mobiles, suspended by bright ribbon as they cast their shadows on the wall.
Barragan and Portillo took a moment to soak it all in. Then they began looking for the youngest creatives among them—their students, all infants and toddlers at an early childhood education center.
Welcome to the “Materials Kitchen,” an educational incubator and sanctuary for reuse on the second floor of the Ely Center of Contemporary Art. Curated and organized by Kristin Brenneman Eno, a visual storyteller who is pursuing her graduate work at the Yale Divinity School, the space is open to early childhood educators through December, when the Ely Center will vacate its physical home and make the move to CitySeed’s building in Fair Haven.
It is inspired by the vast recycling center REMIDA in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and Teaching Beyond the Square in New York, where Eno lived and worked for a number of years before her move to New Haven. Currently, the kitchen—tucked behind the Center's art galleries and down a hallway on the second floor—is open for one more event on November 23. Eno said that educators can also contact her for an appointment by email at kristin@littlecreaturesfilms.com.
It is supported in part by a grant from CERCLE and the City of New Haven, through which she is also running professional development workshops for preschool and early childhood educators. Learn more about those here.
“I think everything [here] is intentional because it’s showing children how to reuse,” she said during an Materials Kitchen open house last Thursday, during which educators trickled in, working not to hip check each other in the tight space. “My dream is to have a home base, a hub with professional development resources for all teachers … where teachers can gather and trade ideas.”
It has followed decades of community-based work teaching in, documenting, and learning about early childhood education, mostly in New York City. A deep believer in the Reggio Emilia approach, Eno grew up in North Carolina, then studied studio art at Dartmouth College in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, her work in visual storytelling took root at Columbia Teacher’s College, where she studied arts education.
Roseli Ortiz, who runs a home day care in West Haven.
In particular, she was interested in giving students space to tell “their own stories,” including through film, and with the use of found and recycled materials as a language of its own. In the early 2000s, she founded Little Creatures, a film company focused on letting children make films about their own imaginations, experiences, and childhood adventures.
Already an acolyte of Reggio Emilia, she also made the pilgrimage to Italy, to study in real time what made the style of learning so unique. Named after the town in which it was founded, Reggio Emilia is a student-guided approach that leans on not just a child’s own interests, motivation and ability to communicate with both peers and educators, but also the belief that they are autonomous human beings, shaped by their experiences and environment.
In addition to a number of founding pillars—like the belief that early childhood education is a basic human right—it believes that kids have “a hundred languages” at their disposal, including the materials by which they are surrounded (“we don’t always listen to those languages,” Eno said). REMIDA, in part, has grown directly out of that.
She was amazed by the work kids were doing in their classrooms—and wondered why education in the U.S. was so very different.
Well before moving to New Haven, Eno sought out spaces that saw the wisdom in the Reggio Emilia approach, including several nursery and elementary schools. She started working as an educational consultant at Teaching Beyond The Square, a space for professional development, early childhood education and reuse. She developed a love for archival work, some of which she later brought to the Ely Center.
So when she and her family moved to New Haven four years ago, “I was like, ‘Where’s the materials center?’” she remembered. The closest analogue was EcoWorks, a hub for creative reuse that is located in North Haven. In the absence of one, she endeavored to build something for educators. When she landed the Yale President's Public Service Fellowship earlier this year, it gave her the time and resources to work at the Ely Center. She credited both EcoWorks and Ely Center Director Aimée Burg for helping her get it off the ground.
The result is both magical and extremely thrifty at a moment when teachers—particularly in early childhood education—are already financially stretched and woefully underpaid, and often reach into their own pockets to provide supplies for their students. When educators step into the kitchen space, they are free to take as much as they want at no cost. Inside, a sustainable wonderland-meets-developmental-playground awaits them: fabric swatches neatly folded and piled in the cabinets, half-used bobbins with sheer ribbon and thick yarn, sheets of red netting that look like they once held oranges.
There are more discarded wine corks and small plastic tags than one person could ever possibly use, waiting for new life in young hands. In a closet by the doorway, used paper goods, bright red envelopes, and old issues of National Geographic round out the room. There are odds and ends everywhere: that’s kind of the point.
Last Thursday, the kitchen buzzed with activity, educators popping in and out in the hours after work ended, and before many of them needed to be home to care for their own children and families. As they perused a vat of small, hexagonal tiles, Barragan and Portillo said they were both excited to learn about Eno’s work, and grateful to have a space to pick up supplies for their itty bitty students.
Both employees at The Nest at Alphabet Academy, the two work with infants and toddlers respectively, meaning they were looking for objects for students to flex their sensory and fine motor skills. At that age, activities like stacking blocks, opening and closing containers, color match activities and simple work stations can help students build their awareness of the world around them—and their bodies within it—in real time.
“It’s great for them to be flexible and really use their imaginations,” said Barragan as she showed off her haul of recycled construction paper, empty containers and a section of bright, colorful turf that made a crackly whisper when she ran a hand over it. She lifted a green tin, once used for peppermint tea, and imagined what it might become for one of the babies she works with. Beside her, Portillo held out a color palette and bag with several used mirrors, perfect for the toddlers who are learning things like object permanence and spatial awareness.
As she inched past them, Roseli Ortiz gravitated toward a shelf filled with paper, marvelling at the different colors that greeted her. The owner of Eli Family Daycare in West Haven, Ortiz works with babies from as young as 12 weeks to kids up to 10, meaning that she serves a wide range of developmental needs and abilities. Thursday, she was on the hunt for objects that could be used for sensory play, particularly for a student of hers who has autism. She found one in a roll of the rainbow turf, which looked like it had once been sliced up for a party.
As Ortiz headed out, teacher Christy Lennington-Asch popped in to find supplies for her preschoolers, students at The Children’s Preschool up by Worthington Hooker School. Ten minutes in, she had found a bag of T-shaped cork stoppers “that kids can use in building,” some stamps, and “a lot of little clear things” that she plans to use atop a light table.
Then, she added, she was able to score a stash of the envelopes, especially clutch as students become tiny pen pals to a “celebrity puppet” named Birdie Bear, the creation of a fellow teacher at the school. Because they go through supplies so quickly—“the kids send him tons of fan mail,” she said with a smile—extra envelopes mean one more thing she doesn’t have to budget for.
As she chatted with Eno, it was clear that the Materials Kitchen will continue to live on beyond November, wherever its next home may be. Eno, for one, is already dreaming about potential spaces, from CitySeed’s Fair Haven headquarters to a school that could double as an institutional partner.
The Materials Kitchen is open for one more event at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, 51 Trumbull St., on November 23. Eno said that educators can also contact her for an appointment by email at kristin@littlecreaturesfilms.com.