During my first month at the studios I have had many interesting talks with the lead artist, David Dixon, who has been working hard to set up some amazing opportunities for the associate artists within Chapel Arts Studios. One of these opportunities is being trained to give Arts Awards to the children, this will be done in November and I can’t wait to get started! For those that don’t know about the Arts Awards, it is a unique set of qualifications for under 25’s, designed to encourage creativity across all the arts. He has also leant me the folder from a previous EPR artist with her lesson plans to give me an idea of how to start writing them up and what she did with the children. I have spent time thinking about ideas and drawing out spider diagrams, adding to them when more ideas come to mind but with little experience in teaching I am still lacking the confidence to turn them into proper lesson plans. I am hoping that after my meeting with the head teacher of the school I will have a better idea of what they want to get out of this too so I can write up some more solid ideas.
I want to focus mainly on the theme of identity by having weekly discussions with them that I will record then edit together and ask the children if they will help me create the visuals for it. Some of the other ideas I have been thinking on expanding:
Through the use of black/white boards to establish an understanding of what identity and community means to them: who does it involve, what does it mean, what features does it include etc.
Consider the project that a teacher did for erasing meanness, by using whiteboards to wipe off hateful words and filling them with ‘How do you want to be remembered?’
Get the children to ask their parents/grandparents to tell them a story from their childhood for them to recite to us, or record this in a way they feel comfortable to show us- record the story on tape, turn it into a poem, use photographs etc.
Getting children to bring in their own photographs that they have a story to tell along with. Swap photographs and see if the children can relate the photographs to their own experiences.
Explore senses to do with family, discuss what they remember about family members other than what they look like: the smell of my nans perfume, the taste of my mums roast dinner, the sound of my nephew giggling.
Go around the room and each add a line to a story to create one together using a photograph as the starting point, come up with a series of starting points for them like; I found… I saw… I heard… I smelt… I felt… etc
Create a concertina book together about out anecdotes and events that happened to us as a class relating to a similar subject- family?
Show examples of Cornell boxes and then ask the children to bring in empty cardboard box (cereal/shoe box etc) and then gather images/ texts of things they love, go to favourite places take photos etc. Create an identity box through doing so.
Create a capsule together of the class identity through projects we have done together and things we have learnt that we share in common that make us a community.
Discuss where was the art? Discussion? Process? Interviewing them? Installation? Why?
I plan on experimenting and researching these ideas further before I meet the head teacher next week to develop them further. I intended on researching the theme of identity at my local library and getting some books out like I would have done at university, but I’m already starting to miss the perks of being a student at WSA, the library was so fantastic! I have since signed up as an alumni student and as soon as my card comes through I plan on visiting WSA and stocking up on some books.
I plan on updating this blog weekly, keeping up to date with what I’m doing; this week there will be another about my trip to London. Thanks for reading; please comment with any suggestions would love to hear them!
