Month: September 2019

This week, our first lecture looked at ‘Room 13’. ‘Room 13’ originally stared as a spare room in a classroom in Fort William but was transformed into a social enterprise that was completely run by the kids in the school. The children used the room as an art studio where they created a variety of pieces using a range of materials. It was ran at such a professional standard that the children even hired an ‘Artist in Residence’ who wasn’t there as a teacher figure to control what they done but they were in the studio as an equal to the children and provided guidance with area’s like technique (Gibb.C, 2012). I found this really inspiring for my future practice as it demonstrated that when teaching art, you should not template children. Not every pupil should be forced to create the same piece as their peers because its denying creativity and the opportunity of personalised learning.

In our Drama workshop, we looked at our final four concepts which where Mime, Monologue, Voices in Head and Slow motion. Drama has been a passion of mine for many years and something I’ve really enjoyed so for us to be coming to the end of our drama inputs, I felt quite sad. This week, our task was to create scenes involving the inputs but we were to take inspiration form some difficult and controversial topics, such as WW2, The Grenfell Disaster or The ‘Me Too’ movement. I thought that the Monologue and Voices in Head were really good concepts to use because it allows children to explore thoughts and feelings in depth and helps to create a better understanding of the topic they’re looking at. However, one problem my group encountered was that we struggled to come up with idea’s for scenes because some of the topics were such sensitive subjects. This highlighted that although some aspects of these controversial topics should be taught in the classroom, not everything would be appropriate and that you should have in-depth knowledge of these sensitive topics so you feel confident to explain to the children the topic in a way that makes sense to them.

Our Visual Arts input started with us creating our own paintbrushes.  We had a variety of materials to choose from, such as twigs, rope, fluff, etc.This was show our individualism as some people created very practical, realistic paintbrushes whist others created more extravagant looking ones. We were then to use the paintbrushes to create a painting of the Scottish Highlands but we weren’t shown the scene we were to paint, it was described to us. This was to make sure that we all made our own original interpretations and didn’t just recreate the picture in front of us. Also, the only paint colours available to us were primary colours, which were blue, red and yellow and this was to encourage us to mix the colours and experiment and see what different colours and shades we could make. I’ve never really had a major interest in art as I’ve always believed through out school that I wasn’t any good at it but I really enjoyed this input. I enjoyed the freedom and creativity and not having to compare my work to other peoples to see who’s was better. I also found a link back to the beginning of the module where we were told to develop a tolerance for ambiguity and messiness and this was demonstrated really well in this particular input.

 

This week’s lecture started with looking at ‘Justifying the Arts-Drama and Intercultural Education’ (Fleming, 2006) and we looked at the process of visual thinking. The task was to take a page of the journal each, pick out metaphors and then draw them on top of the page.I personally struggled with this task as the section I had was mostly academic and filled with quotes so I was unsure how to turn them into pictures.

In our drama workshop, we looked at four main concepts (Still image, Thought tracking and flash forward/back). We took inspiration from Avril Paton’s ‘Windows in the West’ and were to create scenes around things that could be happening in the tenement.  I found this really interesting as there was lots of different ideas showcased within the class and it also helped me to see a link between drama and literacy in the classroom. Drama could be used to enhance creative writing as it could allow children o explore things like alternative ending or beginnings through flash-forwards/ flashbacks.

However, our visual arts workshop was probably my favourite. We covered our hands in black ink and then used them to create different shapes on the page. We then went over them with black pens to see what images we could create. I found this really fun and inspiring because you start out with a simple dot or line and use your creativity to turn it into so much more. It also helped me get rid of the idea that I can’t draw because if you can write, you can draw!

References 

Fleming, M. (2006) Justifying the Arts- Drama and Intercultural Education. The Journal of Aesthetic Education. Vol.40(1), pp.54-64.

This week I started back university and stepped into Second year with an open mind, more than ready to learn all about our first module which was Integrated Arts.  We were given a brief introduction to the module and talked through assessment details but we were also given some vital advice on how to best deal with the module, such as developing a tolerance for ambiguity and messiness.

The two aspects that we focussed on this week was Drama and Visual arts. In drama, we looked at Improvisation and different ways of using it within the classroom, such as Thought tunnel. Some of the methods were teacher lead, such as Hot Seating or Teacher in Role, whilst others where more group lead, like Freeze Frame.

In Visual arts, we first looked at ‘Teaching Art and Design 3-11’, were we discovered that children’s development with art and design happen in stages but children work shouldn’t be exclusively held to these stages as they are influenced by different sources, such as culture and rate of development. We also looked at different children’s work that’s been collected over several decades and I noted that the younger children’s work was more creative and filled with colour and imagination whist the work of the older children was less expressive and looked like they were working to certain requirements rather than their own free choice.

I believe that Drama and the Visual arts are similar in the way that they allow children to express how they’re feeling without actually having to use words. They can use a variety of mediums to express emotions in so many different ways but it doesn’t
have to make sense to anyone but themselves.