So I didn’t get the job at the children’s centre and I actually felt quite bitter when I got the letter. I did the drawing workshop with the kids, and we had lots of fun, but no one was really watching what I was doing, which I thought was odd. They just left me to get on with it. I think I was the 3rd out of 4 artists that they were seeing and they actually had to ask me to finish the workshop because someone else was coming in i.e. the 4th artist. In the letter, it said that they had decided to appoint 2 artists because ‘they showed the most dedication to the Reggio approach’. What a laugh really, they didn’t ask me anything about this at the interview and ironically, the Reggio approach is a holistic way of childcare and I didn’t see much of it in the centre. I think now that they’d had decided which artists they liked even before the workshops, so that they got some free workshops out of us. I was still in denial about the naivety of the children’s centre, they didn’t even put the correct postage on the application form they sent out and I had to go to the local sorting office and pay a fee of £1 to pick it up. I though it was too good to be true when I saw the advert for ‘artist wanted’. Another thing that should have rung mental alarm bells was the breast-feeding display in the foyer of the centre. There were knitted boobs on the table….3 of them!!!!!!!!
On a better note I finished my PTLLS course this week after doing a 30 min micro teach on the pleasures of contemporary drawing. I had to be aimed low as a majority of the other students were health professionals (no offence intended) and a gave them a 10 minute presentation which included a (very) short history of drawing and also some slides about how its not all about pencil on paper. We did a few drawing exercises including portraits where they couldn’t take their pens off the paper and one where they had to draw some objects on a box, which were moved every minute, and the drawings had to be over the top of the previous drawings and if they made a mistake drawing the shape to not to rub it out but just to redraw it. There were a few weird looks when this was being done and someone said that they found it difficult to do this because it goes against everything that they’d been taught. It’s interesting in the differences to what our concepts of drawing are and I expected most people to say that they couldn’t draw but most were quite positive and some used diagrams etc at work in order to convey points across. I got some really good feedback and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and there were some fantastic drawings. A couple of people said that I’d really inspired them to go and start to draw which is a huge compliment.
On the course the main things that I’ve learnt is to how to organise my lessons correctly and also to get the students to do lots of the work by getting them involved right from the start. I’m contemplating progressing to the PGCE, which starts next September. (Only part time though!)
