Children's Manifesto by Steven Rushton (text from the introduction)

What does this say here?
"Steve Rushton.... from the theory department of the Jan van Eyck Academy..."
I'm afraid I'll have to begin by disappointing some of you...What I'm going to say doesn't have too much to do with theory but rather it has more to do with my own observations of children's drawings, of colouring books generally and of Christos' colouring book 'Looping', in particular.
I'll begin by making 2 drawings. The first is my own version of a drawing by the child of a friend of mine, so this drawing was originally made by a little person - so high [indicates height] - I'll try my best to do justice to the original [makes drawing- writes Fig 1 next to drawing].
It is a picture, as you can see, of a person throwing a ball.
The second drawing is my own interpretation of the same subject - so, it's drawn by a person -so high [indicates height][makes drawing and writes fig 2 next to it]
The first drawing tells us what we need to know - there is a person and they are throwing a ball. We know this because there is a body, a head, an arm and some fingers and this round thing which, we assume, can only be a ball. All this is information that tells us what we need to know. [makes ball throwing action]
Now that's Ok, as far as it goes- but I would suggest that maybe this drawing isn't only about giving information, about representing something faithfully, it's also about something else - and I'll go into what that something might be a little later ... but first... let's look at the second drawing.
Now if the task was to represent a person throwing a ball we could see this as a sad failure.
This looks to me like a man throwing a ball, and this man, with hair, is dressed in a pullover, trousers and shoes. So if the task was only to depict a person throwing a ball this drawing over achieves slightly. We have too much information. And maybe this need for representation, this anxiousness to represent, increases with age.
Let's go back to the first drawing because I want to get back to the idea that this drawing isn't only about conveying information. This drawing is almost performing the action of throwing a ball. Now, in the course of speaking to you I've repeatedly performed this action [makes action], the action of throwing a ball...
Why do I need to do that?
Two reasons - the first is that I want to illustrate something to you, to mime the action that I've drawn - but more importantly I want to inhabit the idea of throwing a ball. Of these 2 drawings I would suggest that the first is closest to inhabiting the idea of throwing a ball.
I say this because I want to suggest that children have their own agendas. Fig 1 is not only about giving information it's also about rehearsing and performing an action - and fig 2 is more about representing an action.In fig 2 I'm eager, perhaps too eager, to convey something to you.
So drawing isn't only about accurate representation- it's also about the rehearsal and performance of the action of drawing.
Now, the idea that drawing can be a form of performance and rehearsal is something that the standard colouring book fails to recognise.
Let's take a look at one...
The manufacturers go to great lengths to represent things... [describes the picture] these pictures always ask the same question... the same irrelevant question;
what colour should it be?
Some even go so far as to provide instructions... like this one... [shows book... reads instructions...]
Happily, because children have their own agendas, they disregard this need adults have to represent things. and make another picture.
What really matters here is that there are different spaces with different areas, and all that matters to the colourer is that these spaces are connected - that they become unified and also distinct from each other.
So the important function of a colouring book, which is overlooked, is that the child is performing the action of connecting things to each other and distinguishing things from each other... and this is a form of space exploration.
This, to my mind, is what makes Christos' book such a smart piece of work because somewhere along the line adults forgot what a colouring book is for - or maybe, because adults are so obsessed with representation- they never acknowledged that the action of colouring in is about inhabiting the action of drawing, of mapping a new space with each turn of the page, and so every colouring book can be seen as a children's manifesto - each written in its own language, each mapping out a series of new landscapes. So the people who colour in aren't so interested in representing this landscapes but are rather engaged in making it.