Fisherton Residency – Weeks 9, 10 & 11, Final Workshops and Preparing for the Exhibition.
During my last weeks at Fisherton Primary School I have been focused on preparations for the exhibition to mark the culmination of the residency. I titled the exhibition Light and Landscape to mirror the photographic and environmental themes behind the work. The exhibition was intended to be a celebration of the work the children produced and ran for one day incorporating a workshop where the children could pass on a skill they had learnt to their parents. However before preparations for the exhibition got fully underway I ran one final workshop.
For the last activity I wanted to do something that would promote individual drawing and creativity beyond the end of the residency. For this I introduced the concept of a sketchbook to each year group and ran bookmaking classes to created individual sketchbooks for each child in the school and nursery. To create the front covers of the books we employed skills that we had learnt previously including making cyanotype sun prints and using oil pastels and watercolours. Allowing the children to begin working in their sketchbooks independently I was really pleased by how much more confident they were, especially with drawing. The sketchbooks were really successful and I hope to get the opportunity to come back and see them filled up!
Moving toward the exhibition all the work was finished and mounted and the large photographic collage of the school was framed so it could be permanently hung in the school. A poster was created and I wrote a statement to accompany the event. The exhibition was held on the 14th of June in the village hall. As the hall had limited availability I had to put up and take down the exhibition very quickly. Thankfully I had great support from Leona from South Ayrshire Council and some of the parents from the school. The exhibition was a great success with 90% of parents coming along with their children along with the teachers and staff of the school and members of the public. I had some great conversations with the visitors throughout the day and received really positive feedback. The cyanotype workshop I ran was also a great success incorporating a hands-on element to the experience.
I have now finished my time at the school. It has been a great learning experience and I am thankful for the level of freedom I have been afforded to naturally develop my own program of workshops in keeping with my own knowledge and strengths as an artist. There are many things that I have learnt that would perhaps alter my approach to certain aspects if involved in a similar project in the future, however I could not have asked for a better response from the children. It has been an extremely challenging and rewarding experience.
Fisherton Residency – Weeks 7 & 8, Art in the Environment
I am now over half way through my third and final project working with the children and teachers of Fisherton Primary School. I created the Art in the Environment project to encourage making art inspired by and within the environment. I also wanted to introduce environmental art practices within my workshops and familiarize the children with a few influential artists.
To balance the projects already completed I wanted to begin by making something sculptural with the children. My main influence when deciding what form this would take was the wish to create something that engaged with the natural elements. This has been a primary concern in my own work for some time and continues to inform my practice. I decided to create windmills that would respond to the wind and be painted to reflect different aspects of the local environment. This has been perhaps my most successful workshop so far and I could not be happier with the way the children have responded or with the finished results!
I took a series of photographs when exploring the beach at Dunure of: pebbles shells and seaweed, grasses and wildflowers and ripples and waves in the water. These are all close-up images highlighting small, beautiful and often overlooked elements of the environment. I used these to initiate the paintings we created to cover one side of the windmills. Within my own sketchbooks I have always enjoyed using the combination of oil pastels and watercolors, particularly when working outdoors and drawing elements of the landscape, for this reason I was keen to employ this technique with the children.
Firstly we drew from the photographs using oil pastels and then worked on top with watercolor. The children really engaged with the possibilities of this process and created beautifully vibrant and detailed paintings. The next element involved tracing the windmill template onto metallic card. I purposefully used the metallic card for its mirror-like qualities; it reflects elements of the landscape and colors from the painted side of the windmill. Once these two elements (the painted side and the mirrored side) were glued together and cut to form the windmill template they were ready to assemble. I did this using a long glass headed pin, a small bead and a wooden dowel. The windmills worked better than I could have hoped and the children were very excited to take them outside, it was great to have an activity that gives such instant gratification.
The workshop was also very successful in the range of skills it involved, an element of activity planning that I feel I have become more aware of since working with such a broad age range of children.
Week 7 also included my first CPD (Continuing Professional Development) session held to inform and equip the teachers with skills and ideas from my workshops that they can continue to use and develop. The session was very profitable and I enjoyed sharing the activities with the staff. I took suggestions for the next session of ideas and techniques that the staff would like particular help with for running art activities in the future. I am now in the process of preparing some hands on activities to do together at the next session.
As my time at the school moves on I am thinking and preparing more for our final exhibition of work and how best to approach this. I am keen to run a workshop during the day of the exhibition to further involve the local community with the project at the school.
