This week ended with my first meeting at Portway Junior School, with the head teacher, Tim Deery and the head of arts, Millie Southway, so I spent the week preparing for this by creating some hand outs to take with me. The first outlined my practice and why I applied for/ am doing this residency, the second was a brief explanation of my proposal and finishing with more in depth ideas for lessons.
When showing David my ‘first draft’ of these, we had a great discussion about the amount of art terminology to use when talking with different people, for example when handing in an artist statement for a proposal you need to show the right level of knowledge but when explaining your ideas to the public the language used needs to be adjusted. I was pleased that he felt I had achieved a good balance of terminology, which made me feel less nervous about the meeting. I also made sure that, where possible, I included images of my ideas and artists that I was referencing, this was partly out of habit from presentations at university but also to help me at the meeting.
Throughout the week, I read the book I have on loan from the library, Insistent Voices, but although a thought provoking read, it didn’t help me with writing up my ideas for more projects with the children. I did however pluck out two quotes that interested me about identity, which I plan on researching further.
P3 …each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, though, and in us – through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions, and not least our discourse, our spoken narratives. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives, we are each of us unique. To be ourselves we must have ourselves – possess, if needs be re-possess, our life stories. We must ‘recollect’ ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative of ourselves.
Sacks 1985 quoted in Narrative and Psychotherapy (1997)
P12 ‘Personal identity is sought, and found, through having a past, experiencing a sense of belonging; being loved and valued; being seen as and treated as an adult; and valuing oneself. Social identity is sought through adopting social roles, achieving a valued status, and acquiring useful skills or accomplishments.’
McLeod 1997 p.39 and Atkinson Know me as I am
As well as preparing for the meeting, I revisited a piece from my final year show In Memory Of… which I plan on changing, so it can be exhibited more easily, that is without spending just short of £400 on screens from amazon that I ended up sending back because they were so temperamental! It was good for me to start editing again as I don’t want to forget the skills I learnt, I have 5 more clips to edit next week all of varying length. Also, I received a message from a friend, Peter Driver, who I helped by filming and editing A March for Optimism which he did for his final major project, letting me know that he is submitting this to the Winchester Short Film Festival!
Finally the meeting, which I am very pleased to say went extremely well! I don’t know why I was so nervous, but David came with me, which helped a lot as he introduced us, about the studio and a little bit about the EPR where I started talking. I am so glad I made notes to bring with me, they helped guide what I was talking about, hopefully without me babbling so much! After talking about some of my proposals for workshops/lessons, Tim kindly said ‘what a lot of ideas you have!’ which opened up the discussion nicely. Millie was great, she knew about a couple of artists I mentioned and also asked if I knew about Humans of New York, a project that has exploded with interest, creating a number one selling book! (I definitely did know about it and follow his tumblr for updates!) But something I didn’t know about, was that people’s wishes are printed onto confetti to be scattered all over Times Square for New Years, a project that the children have got involved with by choosing 5 wishes to send in, which I thought was great! After this discussion, I felt a lot more relaxed and so excited to work with such great staff in this school!
From my explaining about my key interest in helping people and my plans for the future, Millie suggested it would be really good if I could work with a smaller group of the more vulnerable children in the school, where I could make a much bigger impact on the children’s experience by being able to work with them a lot more directly and personally. Tim also mentioned that in February they have an art week, which could give me the opportunity to work with the children in bigger groups too! Their theme this year is around the world, something that I can really work with along the theme of identity in different cultures! So far we are thinking that afternoons will be preferable, working with around 8-10 children starting with the year 6’s for 5 weeks at the beginning of November, moving onto the same project but with year 5’s in the New Year.
So for the next week I will be adjusting my ideas to look at this time frame, looking to plan specific lessons/ workshops and gathering material together for these lessons as well as thinking about how I can keep track for the arts award part of the project. Tim and Millie will be thinking about which children could benefit the most from this experience so that the week after next I can visit the school and get to know some of then from a distance as well as meet some of the other teachers. I am so excited for the next few weeks, where things are really going to start getting busy!
