Reflect on the collaborative aspects of the work you have
done. Consider the learning you have gained and how it may now reflect and
impact upon your aims for this project.
As a team member I have worked on a few things for my group whilst
we go through this unit, including organising meetings at least twice a week to
ensure the development of plans are sufficiently stuck to every week. Amongst
others, I have done research into different festivals using colour; I have
learnt that there is a festival in Manchester called the Manchester Run where
they also use powder paint to throw it at each other in a way we plan on doing
with the pupils at DACA. With other peoples research, I have found out a lot to
do with different festivals all over the world which also use colour or food as
the key aspect. For instance, Holi festival in India; the reason it started and
why it happens is It celebrates good harvests and fertility of the land. La Tomatina in Spain is another example.
Finding out all this useful information in our planning procedure, helps me
piece together what we are going to say/do when we do our final lesson plan and
get to DACA.
Reflect upon the key development – was it within a skill,
process, developing a new approach? Identify and discuss, including appropriate
images if relevant.
As one of our key developments, we have researched and
looked into mark making, and have looked at playing different games with the
pupils and what they will make in the day. We have initially thought that they
can make loads of marks with different tools like mops and brushes, recycled
things we can put together and things we find in cheap shops. We put together a
draft lesson plan so we could determine what people needed to work on and to
potentially allocate people jobs. We tried to allocate each other jobs to suite
our interests so the two people doing graphics were appointed the PowerPoint But
we could not really do this for all the jobs as some of them were a bit boring,
like the risk assessments; so some people unfortunately got some boring jobs
too. Once all these parts are put together, we can look at who presents what
and who helps that person, as we all want to take part in something. We were
already quite used to some of these skill sets, but to fully meet our aims, we
had to develop new skills and processes, such as those described above.
Draft Lesson Plan
Draft Job List
Reflect upon the impact of collaboration on your methods
– what aspects interest you? Why? How do you intend to further develop these?
Identify further research necessary to fulfil this. Were there unexpected
developments? What surprises arose?
The aspects that interest me in this unit are giving a fun
but educational workshop for pupils and to take them out of their comfort zone.
In other words, do something they would not usually do at school. I want to do
this because I feel that these days, art in schools is very much ticking boxes
and passing people so they get as many GCSE’s as possible, which is great for
the schools and the country, but it also means that every pupil is doing the
same as everyone else, and in the same specific way. This became clear at DACA when
they were told they had to do it a certain way and any other way was wrong. At
university and even college, we are always told there is no right or wrong
answer, so if a child is being told it is wrong then my belief is that they are
not fulfilling their full potential. Therefore, by doing something that is
completely different from what they usually do and takes them out of their comfort
zones, they are free to do whatever may inspire them to find a creative career
pathway.
To further my research into this as a group and individually,
I looked further into giving them activities where they can decide how
something looks and design things for themselves to show that their ideas are
right. Giving them tools so they can make marks freely will give them that
freedom with their artwork, and when it is over, this will hopefully reflect in
their schoolwork.
Whilst looking into this, I wanted to do an exercise where
they use the basis of our workshop and design/make something for themselves.
Whether it is a poster of something of interest using mark making; or giving
them plain t-shirts to design with the tools we gave them so they can take this
away from the workshop and remember what we taught them. Having looked into
this, I pitched it to my piers and we decided that they could do this on
anything like a small canvas or any type of garment. This unexpectedly led us to
having the idea that they would all make something together that they could
potentially put up in school like a collage. I definitely think this is going
to be something we do for the class so they can see it in school and be proud
of what they did in our workshop.
What are the creative responses that you have done and
intend to develop in your project practice. Consider why this is- what are the
key aspects of interest? How does it relate to the broader area of your
practice? Does it develop your understanding and appreciation of context for
your work? How?
One of the creative responses I have been involved with is
mark making. I have previously drawn with sticks, needle and thread, and
objects, so I am interested in furthering this and broadening my knowledge on
this for the day at DACA. I feel it is extremely important that the pupils can
be free with all of their movement, so we plan to include music so they can
move with the music. Our group think they will get the most out of it this way.
As I specialise in print and I do a lot of mark making
initially in projects, I feel that the process of this will work to my
advantage as well. I am more than certain I have been learning and will
continue to learn new skills even if it isn’t that practical. I think these
will relate to the broader areas in my own practice, including looking at
colour more, listening to music and closing my eyes and feeling the music with
any media I may be using.
The personal understanding of the mark making including the
music makes it a lot easier for me and the rest of the group to get the pupils
to engage with the task in hand. Therefore practising this myself, which I plan
on doing, will show me what they may be thinking or feeling in response to what
we are telling them.
Identify and discuss any additional research now needed
to support and underpin your learning, your appreciation of your practice and
development of your ideas.
The research we need to undertake to underpin our learning
is to look at artists, and then, how we are going to include everything in the
day. The activities we are going to do have been discussed; it has been suggested
we use the method that is information, activity, discussion. Therefore, we are
going to go by this and base our day on giving the pupils information throughout
the day with each step followed by an activity and then having a discussion on
what they have done and learnt. Research needs to go into mark making and we
also need to look into what artists use as different tools and objects to apply
paint or any other media. We plan on looking at Jackson Pollock and Ian
Davenport. These artists use different objects in their work so we would like
to get a bit of knowledge behind us before we go to DACA.
Identify a plan of action that is now required in order for
you to complete e.g. time management, exploring new technology, furthering your
contextual research and knowledge?
The plan of action now is to draw up a solid lesson plan, which
means that we need to look at who is doing each part of the presentation, what
resources we need, who is buying what resources. We also need to look at who is
the most comfortable to lead the workshop and be the person to introduce our
day. Another thing that needs to be sorted out is the mark making activity
itself; we need to figure out what music they will be listening to, will it be
classical or chart music. We also need to plan the timetable so that we can
achieve all our goals within each day.
This will need detailed planning.
Another thing I want to be involved with potentially is the
artist research, looking at what artists use mark making in a similar way as
what we will be doing. So when we show the presentation, the pupils have some
visuals to look at to give them an idea of what we are trying to achieve.
