ABSTRACT
This chapter describes creative capacity building when young children visit museums-he taonga, he rerenga arorangi-where there are objects that are treasured, and spaces where the spirit is nurtured, then there will be the freedom to soar to the heights of one's creative potential. It then returns to the coordinates to remind ourselves of some animating pathways, where “to animate” means, in this context, “to give life to or cause to come alive, to encourage or inspire, and to impart motion to”. The chapter considers Dewey's principle of continuity of experience as a “criterion of discrimination” to describe one of the ways in which creative capacities might become an ongoing habit. It defines Dewey's “desire to keep on learning” as an aspect of curiosity. Whakamana (empowerment) is a first way forward for creative capacity building: a pedagogy that is supported by curiosity and learning dispositions.
