Room 13 is an arts initiative that began in Fort William in 1994. The children of Caol Primary School were asked to produce words, letters and number made out of clay and they would later take pictures of them.  Unfortunately, I was not able copy in the photograph from the presentation.

The pupils felt that school, in particular Art, was too easy and adverse to difficulty and so Room 13 was created. By taking the school photographs, this allowed the funds to be kept in house.

They have since transformed into a global uprising of creative an entrepreneurial children who are responsible for growing an international network of student-organised art studios (Gibb, 2012).

As teachers, we can gain encouragement from Room 13’s theories and pedagogies. As currently, the methods utilized for teaching the arts are becoming increasingly formulated and strategic, which is constricting creativity (Gibb, 2012). Compliance to a set of ‘past practices’ and ‘orthodoxies’ (Atkinson, 2005, Hickman, 2005) that privileges technical skills and teacher-led pedagogies at the expense of creativity and more pupil-led pedagogy which privileges free expressive modes of thinking and making (McAuliffe, 2013).

Adopting Room 13’s pedagogy that we learned about in our lecture within our workshop, enabled us to see the outcome that when you allow choice, you get individuality.

We were able to test this theory within our visual arts workshop by having Diarmuid ask us create a paintbrush out of materials such as witties, wool and wire. He then described a picture to us and we had to create our own painting using his description only using the primary colours.

Being able to link theory and practice about arts education has been valuable for enhancing my skills , as before this module when teaching I would have expected children to most likely copy either painting or pictures and the pupils will have ended up with the same result (see picture below). It is not a skill I am comfortable with yet, but hope to continue to develop this throughout the module.

We were also allowed to utilize choice in our drama workshop. We were focusing on using drama as an integrated approach to topic work, mostly focusing on history and controversy. By first discussing topics and looking at images relating to them, such as, the Me Too movement and WW2, allowed us to get into the mind frame of how certain characters may have been feeling.

I found this helpful as the drama conventions, (mime, monologue, voices in the head and slow motion) this week were quite difficult. In groups, we created role plays based on the two topics mentioned above adopting different conventions. Acting out these topics, I felt as though I was being disrespectful. Although, I do understand the need to teach children about these past and present issues and drama can be a good way to implement it.

Reference List

Gibb, C. (2012) Room 13: The Movement and International Network. International Journal of Art & Design Education. [online] Vol 31.3, p237. Available: http://www.nsead.org/publications/ijadearticle.aspx?id=809 [Accessed: 26th September 2019].

McAuliffe, D (2013) Art and Design Education. In T. Bryce and W. Humes (et al eds.) Scottish Education (4th Edition): Referendum, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

What does thinking look like? By taking the written word and drawing out the metaphors within it allows visual thinking to take place. Visual thinking allows pupils to develop the way in which they think and to help them understand. During today’s lecture, we were each given a page of an academic article and used pictures and colour to pull out metaphors within the paper. I felt this technique helped aid my own understanding of the paper more clearly than if I was just reading it.  See my example below.

Using this approach can help raise attainment levels with programmes, such as Making Thinking Visible being rolled out across Scotland. This programme is mainly aimed at the East Ayrshire sector, as despite money being poured into helping raise levels of literacy and numeracy, it still has the lowest levels of these subjects in the United Kingdom. MTV is focused on helping pupils develop their higher order thinking skills and unite these alongside the learning of each subject (Stewart, 2019).

During our workshops, the theme running through each of the parts was the question of what does thinking look like ? We were able to explore this concept in visual arts by making prints of parts of our hands, like our fingertips to create prints. We twisted and turned the pages to see what images we could see inside these prints and used a black biro pen to enhance them and bring the image to life.

Make a mark and see where it takes you (Reynolds, 2003). By using visual thinking, we were able to use our imaginations and draw what we saw rather than writing it.

Drama uses the concept of visual thinking through giving pupils a scenario and asking them to act out what they think would happen in the situation rather than writing it down. Our workshop today consisted of us using this idea, based around the painting ‘ Windows in the West’ by Avril Paton.

We had to visualise that we lived in this tenement building and had to perform different dramas each time using a different drama convention. This week we focused on still image, flash forward, flashback and thought tracking. Although we focused on mostly upbeat scenarios, we have to be careful as we cannot use drama as way to solve the worlds problems.

Reference List

Reynolds, P. H. (2003) The Dot. Candlewick Press

Stewart, R. (2019). Making Thinking Visible

In order to be successful within the arts, there has to be a tolerance for mess and ambiguity. We do not know where we will finish or where creativity will lead us. Creativity is not a series of direct actions, in which we have all the capabilities needed before we start (Sir Ken Robinson, 2015).

Art was introduced into education to prepare people for the work place to increase hand-eye coordination and build creativity skills. He is also able to support this statement by expressing that , ” Creativity is possible in all areas of human life, in science, the arts, mathematics, technology, cuisine, teaching, politics, business, you name it.” (Sir Ken Robinson, 2015, non-paginated).

During our first workshop for visual arts, we explored a range of portfolios from children in early years, all the way up to upper primary. When looking at the upper primary work, I noticed the work seems to be more teacher led and more interference and there was a noticeable difference between the different phases, with topical and social studies within the art being created.

It also became more apparent that the children lacked confidence and therefore felt more comfortable copying other bodies of work. McAuliffe et al (2007) found that as children become aware of the art around them, they begin to feel more self conscious about their own skills and their own work.

Drama was our second workshop and we began by discussing how we felt about drama, both performing and teaching. I am not overly confident performing or teaching it as it lies outside my comfort zone and is not a curricular area I have a lot of experience in.

Looking at different drama conventions, such as teacher in role and freeze frame, gave us the opportunity to explore drama in a bit more detail. Working in groups, we were given the scenario of being villagers with a dragon terrorising our village and using the conventions we each took on a different role and seen how it could be used in lessons at school.

Reference List

McAuliffe, D. (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings In Teaching Art and Design 3-11 London : Continuum.

Sir Ken Robinson : Creativity Is In Everything, Especially Teaching (2015) [online] Available: https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/40217/sir-ken-robinson-creativity-is-in-everything-especially-teaching [Accessed: 16 September 2019].