Week 3- 24th of September

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.

References

Gibb,C. (2012) Room13: The Movement and International Network. The International Journal of Art & Design Education. Vol.31(3), p.237-244

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Report a Glow concern
Cookie policy  Privacy policy

Glow Blogs uses cookies to enhance your experience on our service. By using this service or closing this message you consent to our use of those cookies. Please read our Cookie Policy.