Morpeth School

The project at Morpeth school consisted of two short day workshops (11.15 to 3.15 inc. lunch)

The first workshop was run by Sarah, the second by Gina.
A different group of 20 year 8 children were involved each week. Two art teachers and several classroom assistants attended both sessions.

Cloth of gold were invited to introduce screen and mono-printing to the pupils and teachers with the intention that they could then fashion a longer term project to make some large scale banners, themselves, based around the techniques learnt in the two workshops.

The children prior to the project had been out in their local area and done some observation drawing and worked on ideas around feelings evoked from certain landscapes. This is to be the theme of their long term project. Sarah’s group had cut stencils and shapes before the workshop. She worked on pieces of fabric the same size as the extra large screen. The fabric was mono-printed by four children and then screen printed with their pre-prepared shapes.
The teachers hadn’t understood the need to have a parallel activity going on so it was felt this approach left too much waiting around

time between mono and screen printing. It was also felt that the pieces of fabric didn’t need to be used for anything so the whole approach could be more experimental. This was conveyed to me before I went to do my workshop.

I took in loads of textured surfaces that I use in my own practice and set groups of five up mono-printing. I talked about colour ranges and the danger of taking a mono-print too far. But I very much let the children control their own pieces. They worked either on a group, pair, or individual piece of fabric.
This group didn’t have any shapes prepared so when they weren’t mono-printing they were drawing up their stencils or shapes inspired by their observation drawings.

In the hour and half after lunch we screen printed everyone’s shapes with a combination of large and small screens. Conversationally I tried to point out, whilst working, potential pitfalls and handy hints to both staff and kids in order that they may be able to do it on their own.
I repeated some children’s motifs to show that as one of the advantages of screen printing.

The day had an air of productive chaos with 20 children all busy learning new techniques. The final pieces showed that the children had controlled their own work, some pieces obviously were better than others.
Everyone seemed to have a grasp of the processes and I think it gave the teachers a realistic idea of what larger scale fabric printing is like within a classroom context. GS

Open House Day at SCCS

Open House. Sat 16th September at South Camden Community School.
This workshop was to celebrate Architecture in London and many of the listed buildings were open to the public.

SCCS has a newly designed IT extension which was part of the accredited architectural buildings and the school thought that it would be a good idea to run a print workshop for the public, so that people could make use of some of the facilities on offer at SCCS.
We asked people to think about their ‘dream house’ or ‘building’ draw a stencil, cut and print a panel.

We had brought some reference to inspire and encourage them to have a go. We probably saw about 45-50 people, of all ages, not all of them wanted to print but lots of people came and asked questions about textiles at South Camden, about Cloth of Gold and projects we might be doing in the future.
It was really well attended and the feedback from the school was very good. Here’s feedback from the Headteacher Rosmary Leake:
‘Many thanks for the very successful organisation – as I said in briefing, a very effective day. Definitely a good move to have the print workshop – one of the parents I showed round this morning had been in it with her two children and spoke very positively about it....
And to everyone else who generously gave their time and energy to help the day go well – many thanks!’

Also from the event organiser:

‘Thank You for all your help and support for Open House last Saturday. We had many visitors, the vast majority being prospective parents and local residents. Feedback on the print workshop and Bollywood dancing was very good’
SD

St Joseph's

In wk beginning 18th Sept O6 I worked at St Joseph’s RC Primary School , London Bridge with the Y3 class over 2½ days.

On the first half day we did a portrait drawing session (using mirrors) & also a drawing session to create the religious symbols they wanted on the banner.

The portraits were great, they were all photocopied prior to cutting so that the originals could be used for a display, I cut out the photocopies.

The workshops all went very well, despite the teacher being unwell, and the fact that we were unable to have Y6 students to help cut. I did all the cutting with a little bit of help from two classroom helpers I worked through both lunch times to get the cutting finished and the printing was finished by 3.20 on the last day. When we did a Q & A session. . It was also quite a challenge printing such a large banner in the classroom but it all went fine, and they were very pleased with the end result & the children loved it. SP

"

St Columbus

Dan & I had two great days working at St Columbus Catholic Boys School in Bexleyheath. We were also assisted by Eliana one of our flight paths artists who was extremely helpful.

Dan & I were both printing banners in separate but adjoining art rooms with a group of 15 -20 students each. On day one we both had Y9 groups on day 2 we both had Y7 groups. On day one Dan was allocated ‘Aboriginal’ art as a theme & I was given ‘Africa’. The school was very good at providing a range of support material to work from.
These two banners are going to be hung in the school hall alongside the one I did at St C’ last year.

Day 2 the chosen theme was Renaissance art with a religious focus. The banners are both going to be hung in the schools chapel. Dan & I designed the banners together so they had a similar look, his chosen central figure was Jesus & I did Mary..

Both days got quite competitive between the two groups and Day 2 was dubbed the ‘Renaissance War’ as both groups were convinced their banners were better than the other.. I think we were both quite ambitious in our Banner designs on day 2 as we were both printing frantically through all breaks to finish in time.. which we did!

The School was very pleased with all the work. SP

Tiverton High School Flags

I went back to Tiverton to work with art department and pupils from Year 10 on banner designs in response to work created around a visit to Eden.
The art dept is inspirational and they are great people to work with.
Here are the designs that were created.. they will become permanant flags at the front of the school.
http://homepage.mac.com/unpopular/PhotoAlbum29.html

Embedding ICT in the Art Curriculum

Teachers work from follow up Inset

We had a follow up Inset with secondary art teachers recently. They had attended a 2 day training session back in January as part of the 'Embedding ICT in the Art Curriculum National Training Programme' that I worked on with Kevin Mathieson. We were reviewing progressing and expanding on some of the skills and ideas introduced in the earlier sessions.

It was a very interesting session - It's very rare we, as trainers, get the chance to hear how well people have managed to apply skills they have learned during training sessions.

The reports were mixed due to a wide range of obstacles that teachers had to overcome in order to move forward with ICT. Some had very little access to computers still within their departments, others were forced to take over ICT suites that were never intended to be used for anything other than spreadsheets, databases and word processing. All of those that attended - and some that sent their appologies - had shown great persistence and ingenuity in overcoming the barriers that existed to using new technoloies creatively in the art department.
It was interesting how the fact that we had promised a follow-up session for them had motivated and supported teachers over the 5 months since the first sessions - they all said how important this was for them.

Work from pupils at Clyst Vale School who were working through the same process explored during the first inset sessions:

We then had a refresher session on Photoshop using todays papers to explore ideas around photomontage - coincidentally both Kevin and I had been using the excellent Cut & Paste Website in schools to introduce Photomontage to pupils as an artform in its own right
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davepalmer/cutandpaste/ We had some discussion about how this approach encourages pupils to think more about how you can use Photoshop to create different meanings and messages - moving further than the novelty of photo-manipulation.
Another site worth looking at is this australian one.. 'Cant see the Join' heres the link
http://www.abc.net.au/arts/visual/stories/montage/page1.htm

Sarahs Digital Maps

Good morning blog workers

Good morning from sunny Cog Cornwall. Here I am in two places at once! The one in London today is the real me but I have left my virtual self in Cornwall. Here I am at the Design Centre at Tremough Campus, Falmouth showing the digital printing procedure to some of the participants in the Tidelines project. Have a good day!

Islington City Learning Centre - Easter Photoshop workshop

Dan and myself ran this workshop over a period of two full days at a very well equiped Islington City Learning Centre. We had around 15 students each day (Yr8,9 and 10), which given that it is a holiday was a good turn out. This workshop was a bit of an unchartered territory as we were not screenprinting (the IT room is squeeky clean!), but instead Anna, Dan and myself devised a plan involving rubbings, collaging, photographs and texture scanns as a resource materials. The overall concept to the workshop was to create Fantasy landscapes, using object, shapes and textures to create surrealist compositions.

First day was focused on getting the rubbings of found objects that we brought along, working only with graphite sticks on paper, from which they built a surreal landcape collage. We scanned some of those rubbings and got them working on the Photoshop to try and recreate on the computer what they had done previously. We also gave them as a resource images that Dan brought along, Max Earnst images (as an example) and some black and white unusual images (eg microscopic shapes, stencil like shapes etc). But they ended up using images in themselves rather then transforming them into something else. So after a lunch break (provided by ICLC, lovely ciabatta sandwiches :-) we recapped the idea, and asked them to only use rubbings or other abstract images to create landcsape, buildings etc. This worked much better and they started to get into it.
We started working only in Black & White and then introduced the colour, and we had to quite quickly work out the Hue/Saturation - click on the colorise box in order to bring colour into the black and white images.

For the second day we asked them to bring objects, such as domestic objects like cheese graters, forks (NOT knives!) or any other personal objects such as mobile phones - which is easy as they would have them anyways...They photographed those objects and incorporated them in their digital collage.
Towards the end of the 2nd day some of the pupils scanned or photographed images they needed and that worked well as they could tailor images to their own designs.

Overall it worked very well, and was enourmously enjoyable workshop to run. We impressed the big boss (from Islington gov that funded the project).
The challenge was to balance the use of Photoshop with other activities like rubbings and photographes, and to encourage them to really push their imagination and not go for the obvious objects and shapes. And of course the challenge of teaching the technical side of Photoshop with the creative freedom to play is always there! Great fun though!!!

Islington City Learning Centre - Easter Photoshop workshop images

Debden Photoshop & Screenprint workshop

Both Dan and myself ran this workshop over two half days. The first day focused on screenprints inspired by music and performance classes they attended previously as part of their curiculum. Dan brought some wonderfully strange music for the warm up which worked well for the remaining session. I photographed the students getting them to imagine how they could interact with a musical instrument (as most of them had drawn then screenprinted various musical instruments). So they for example imagined standing on top of the drums, holding a guitar etc...The second session was solely Photoshop based and after a hairy start (the school has new computers but a temperamental system) they got into it and produced some digital gems.

Digital Cog

Bodmin Banners
Check out pics and description of Bodmin banner day below plus see designs on CoG site http://www.clothofgold.org.uk/features.html
then comment..

Train coming round the bend...

.. then moving on...

.. a very blue sky.

Bodmin Banners

I hung these banners up yesterday using the Al bamboo technique and very high poles (18') I hung them in a crystal clear still morning then after half an hour the wind whipped up a treat. A good test-lots of flapping but it all held firm for the arrival of councilors and big wigs in a steam train. Very surreal.
When they went I took them down again - shortest hanging in history.
But check the pics... the light was amazing its been so clear lately which is why there is ice on my car in the morning but burning hot sun by noon.