Room 13 is an art project which focuses on artwork created by children. This project was introduced in 1994 and involves child and adult artists working together to produce artwork. It has branches not only in Scotland but also in  London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, South Africa, India and Nepal. “Room 13 provides a continuum that works across the academic spectrum, embracing learners of all ages and abilities and linking school, art, learning and life. It achieves this not by undermining or offering opposition to conventional teaching practice or existing curriculum, but by supplementing it in a way that
adds value.”(Gibb, 2012, page 244)

Visual arts

I found both of today’s workshops to be highly interactive and interesting. The first workshop I took part in was Visual arts. During this workshop, I was involved in creating a paintbrush using different materials such as a twig, feathers and wool.

The following pictures shows how my paintbrush turned out to be.

 

In my opinion, creating a paintbrush before making a painting was a very good idea. It was an exciting experience which I would definitely make use of in a classroom setting. Creating my own paintbrush enabled me to be more creative as the marks that I was making was very different to what it would have been with a regular paintbrush bought from the shop.

After creating the paintbrush, i made a paint pallet using white paper and used 4 different colours (red, white, yellow and blue) to create various colours which i might need for my painting.

The above is a picture of the pallet I used. Using only four different colours, I created many more.

The painting that I created was described verbally by the lecturer and therefore it was very different from what other people within the classroom had created. I feel this is mainly because we all think and view things differently.

The same verbal instruction was given to everyone in the class. although there were similarities between the paintings, they all looked very different.

 

Painting which I created.

 

Paintings created by different people within the class. 

Music

The 2nd workshop was music where I learned another way of playing and teaching glockenspiels : Using figure notes instead of conventional notation.

 

We got the opportunity to play three different musics: Jingle bells, twinke twinkle little star, and Frere jacques. The figure notes for all three of the musics is shown in the picture above.  I found it easier to play with the figure notes compared to conventional notation and I feel that children at an early stage would also find playing music using figure notes much more easier and enjoyable than using conventional notation.

After this activity, we improvised our own music using the only 5 of the notes: C,D,E,G,A (represented by figurative notes).  From doing this activity i learned that anyone can create music.

References

Gibb, C. (2012) Room 13: The Movement and International Network. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 31(3), pp.237-244.

Today’s lecture and workshop was mainly based on the development of children’s artwork. During the lecture we were given out an extract from the book “The arts in education: an introduction to aesthetics, theory and pedagogy”.  Our task involved drawing the thoughts and ideas that came into our minds while reading the words.  Although it was a very simple task, i found it  challenging to put my thoughts into paper through drawing.  From the lecture, I learned that I need to build up a tolerance for ambiguity when it comes to arts – the idea that there is more than one way of looking at things.

In the workshop, we were provided with the opportunity to look at some art archives. As identified by Lowenfeld and Brittain, there are four different stages children go through in arts education. These are: scribbling stage (2-4 years old); pre-schematic stage (4-7 years old); the schematic stage (7-9 years old);gang stage (9-12 years old) (McAuliffe, 2007)

Scribbling stage:

This is an example of a painting from the scribbling stage. At this stage, the marks made by children can be difficult to understand. An adult might consider the above drawing as a scribble but for a child it could be “a map of meaning making” (McAuliffe, 2007, page 27).

Pre-schematic stage:

At the pre-schematic stage, children’s drawing seem to make more sense. They start to connect the shapes that they draw to what they see around them.

Schematic stage:

The above piece of artwork is made using tissue papers and represents a child’s work from the schematic stage.

Gang stage:

When children reach this stage of artistic development, they tend to become less creative and imaginative .  As they start seeing the artworks of others, they start doubting their own abilities.  Artwork during this stage are liable to be more topic based.  (McAuliffe, 2007)

“Stage theories are based on this culturally specific and traditional view of visual representation and thus may misrepresent children’s development. In any case, it is suggested that children conform only roughly to these stages and any apparent ‘stage’ of development is best considered without undue emphasis on chronological age” (McAuliffe, 2007, page 26)

While looking at the art archives, I realised that teachers play a huge role in supporting children to create artworks. Without appropriate materials, the above artworks would not have been the same. For example, the painting from the pre-schematic stage would need a thick brush whereas the painting shown in the gang stage would require a fine brush. Also, without the scrunched tissue papers, the Scottish flag would not have the same outcome.

In the last lecture, we had spoken about how arts can be Incorporated into different curricular areas. Viewing children’s art archives enabled me to see examples of this.

The above artwork caught my attention when looking through the archives. The child has integrated both arts and literacy in their artwork . They have made use of simile and metaphors and have not failed to be creative and imaginative with their drawing.

References:

McAuliffe, D (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings. in Teaching Art and Design 3-11 (Edited by Sue cox, Robert Watts, Judy Grahame, Steve Herne and Diarmuid McAufille) London: Continuum.

I walked into the lecture with very little idea about what I would be expected to carry out during my time in the integrated Arts module.

During the lecture, We were introduced to “TALLIS Habits Pedagogy wheel”  which teachers can use as a guide when teaching. The wheel is separated into 5 habits which are Imaginative, Inquisitive, Collaborative, Persistent and Disciplined.

We also discussed about how teaching arts is not given the same level of importance as teaching literacy and mathematics. However, arts can be incorporated into both of these curricular areas as well as health and well being and can help to make learning more meaningful and more enjoyable for students. Taking part in any kind of arts can bring many benefits. In The book “The arts in education: an introduction to aesthetics, theory and pedagogy”, Fleming (2012) discusses about why arts should be taught. He provides the readers with many reasons and from that list i found two points very fascinating; to “improve performance in other subjects”; To “develop the mind- help pupils to think” (page 11).  Personally, I had always assumed arts to be something that was mainly done for pleasure but the points raised by Fleming has helped to educate me about the wide range of benefits arts can bring. Fleming (2012) also talks about how arts can be integrated into other curricular areas and make learning more exciting for the pupils. As a result, it may improve “attendance and attitudes to schools as a knock-on effect” (page 12)

Visual arts

The first workshop I took part in was all about visual arts. This workshop not only gave me an insight into how people view from different perspective but also allowed me to think more into detail about the artwork children produce from an early age. We discussed about how every piece of artwork will have a message that the artist is trying to convey. Even in schools, the students will have a story behind a picture they have created and by asking thoughtful and curious questions, we can develop the student’s literacy skills.

The above picture was drawn as a example during the workshop. Although this artwork may not have any meaning to the viewer of this picture, it could mean a lot to the artist.

Music

For the second workshop, we focused on music and how it can affect ours moods. we discussed about how different sounds of music can change the meaning of something. We carried out a task as groups of 4/5 which involved listening to a piece of music and trying to interpret what the story behind the sound was. Although every groups came up with different ideas, we all had similar concepts behind our story (sad, happy, something dramatic happens etc).

In conclusion, I found today’s lecture and workshops to be very interesting. The teaching style for this module seems to be different from the other modules and i look forward to my next Integrated Arts class.

 

References 

Fleming,M.(2012). The arts in education: an introduction to aesthetics, theory and pedagogy. London:Routledge