Mallory Bagwell plays with and within space. Outdoor space, living space, cyberspace, and cognitive space. He believes conscious/conscientious movement within space is vital to learning and living. Motion is life—some space required. And as obvious as this may seem it receives less than deserved traction in the 21st century. Two contributing factors are the commodification of childhood and the discrepant pace between technology /
education and the biologically governed pace of child development. Changing family and community structures are other big ones. As a result, his work in schools and conferences revolves around education through the physical—with fitness being a tacit byproduct of the interest and motivation children and grownups find in hands-on engagement. A former teacher, camp director, Ringling Clown College graduate, mime artist, game developer, web app producer, writer, and house designer / builder, he has been called a renaissance man by few and a professional kid by many. He has been recognized as a CT Young Artists performer of the year, a CT Master Teaching Artist, and is a recipient of the Hartford Courant Tapestery award for a touring bus project about diversity. He received a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Connecticut within the Gifted & Talented program and is an exceptional programmer of enrichment activities for youth and adults alike. Currently he teaches creativity and the arts at Eastern Connecticut State University, is on the Hartford Performs roster, and is working on a school-community engagement app. He loves and lives metaphor, is a conceptual arsonist, builds his own houses, has karmic board meetings with Forest Gump, Chauncey Gardener, and Walter Mitty, and lives with his wife, Michele, in an extreme green, off-grid house, on 50 acres in Storrs, CT. |