More images from The Bolsover School

Above; paper folding inspired by Janpanese textile artists

constructing with wire

paper frames drying after a days work

Creative Partnerships at The Bolsover School

After Easter I started a residency at The Bolsover School. We are working on five wall hangings to go in the new school. Alongside this we are exploring handmade paper and constructed textiles. The Bolsover is a specialist enterprise school so we hope to use the paper to make products for the school to sell.
In these first four weeks we have been doing some research into methods of textile construction. We've looked in books and had group discussions to decide what ideas we would like to try out ourselves. Then we've tried out different methods with materials.

• tapestry with a cartoon
• shading
• colour gradation
  
• origami
• constructing with wire and recycled fabric
• constructing with paper
• making paper sheets from recycled paper
• collecting plants and flowers from around the schools to make paper
• laminating
• paper bowls
• dying paper with poster paint
• exploring natural form
• dying fabric
• ikat dying
• tye dying
• drawing

All of our work is dcumented in 'The book of this project' which is a working title.

Artist Carousel

Year 10 at Benton Park, image by Sue Dixon


Year 8's at Roundhay School, image by David Lindsay


Year 10's Benton Park, image Rebecca Strain

Year 8's at Roundhay School, image David Lindsay

image David Lindsay

This year I took part in the Artist Carousel programme run by Education Leeds and ArtForms. Nine artist and nine schools were chosen to take part. The aim of the project was to introduce artists and secondary schools. Artists were asked to share the way they work with pupils at the schools.
The topic of my sessions were 'Communication in Contemporary Art Practice'. I wanted the students to think about what they are trying to communicate visually through their work and also to share with them ways to come up with and then develop thier ideas.

I used Clare Charnley's Coversation of Things as an example of visual communication. I specifically chose this artist as she lives locally and had been short listed for the prestigous Northern Art Prize.

The pupils from year 7 to year 13 worked in small groups and created there own conversations using things from the classroom and things I had brought to the session. We then discussed our experiences and shared our converstaions. It was important for the pupils to work outside their sketchbook and not to be afraid of 'making mistakes' or getting it wrong. Feedback from pupils was excellent. 'It made me think opener about art', said one pupil form Brighshaw High School. Other schools I worked with were Horsforth School, Benton Park, Roundhay and Priesthope.

Accident Prevention Workshop

Lead by artist Dawn Sharkey, this workshop with year 3 pupils from Leeds, focused on raising awareness about safety whilst using the road and whilst swimming in the sea. There were four artists involved in facilitating this fun and informative workshop.

There were four groups facilitated by Dawn Sharkey, Larna Campbell, Louise Atkinson and myself. After introduction games we discussed the aims of the workshop which was to create images for banners that would tell young people how to stay safe. The banners would then be displayed in Bradford Bulls Stadium.

First we made people like us to walk on the footpath from card shapes so that the images could be seen clearly.

Next we made cars and placed these on the road. Dawn had made templates of traffic lights, zebra crossings and as you see above traffic islands.



The young people learned how to use the digital camera to take pictures of the different ways to cross the road. Above is people crossing using a subway. We took a photograph of each scene and on our worksheets we did a drawing and wrote what we did.

Next we cut out some letters from what we had written on our worksheets and arranged these on the road scene.We had a great morning it was so much fun. This is what some of the kids said about it:
'It was brilliant today xx'
'I like the teachers so much!'
'I learnt how to be as safe as possible'
'I think it was a fantastic day'

World Environment Day 6th June

Oh this was sooo much fun!  I worked with Louise Atkinson to make a shanty town with pupils from six primary schools in Leeds.  Whinmoor, Crossgates, Seacroft Grange, Swarcliffe, and Grimes Dyke.

We gathered up all the things that were lying around our homes and local area that were not in use and created some beautiful artwork in the grounds of Temple Newsom.  Below are some pictures of what we did.

We worked in teams of 3-5 and designed and built our own building.

There were lots of decisions to be made about shape, colour, decoration etc.

We all worked together to make it work.

We painted the outside and made curtains and chimneys.

This is how it looked when we put them all together - we even built a bridge!!  And at the end of the day the whole town was recycled and made back into new card, paper and plastic for us to use again.

Bangladeshi mature ladies goup

I am volunteering on a project run by Artworks, Creative Communities, Bradford who are delivering a project focusing on healthly eating with a group of mature ladies from Bangladesh who meet regularly at BEAP in Manningham in Bradford.

When the lead artist Sarah McHenry and I met to discuss the ten week project we agreed that I would do a session on papermaking. I suggested using herbal tea to introduce this to the ladies in and informal way. After a series of sessions where the ladies used dried foods to make patterns, then draw from these patterns we decided that would be a good point to bring in the paper making session.

Some of the ladies were aware of the process and were really looking forward to giving it a go. I allowed them to lead and they encouraged the others in the group to take part. A problem that we face with this group is that many of the ladies don't speak much English. This session was very visual and I found it easy to demonstrate and facilitate with limited verbal communication.

The ladies all loved this process and were delighted when their sheet came out. They used herbal tea to dye the sheets and plants and dried food to decorate. Here are some images of the process.

Arts for Hearts, Year 3

Year three (7-8 year olds)

After lunch I worked with the year three children. This group seemed much more advanced so I adapted the session accordingly. We started with a discussion about health- foods, drinks, activities, sports, staying clean, etc. This group had a good concept of how to be healthy and where able to discuss this confidently in a group.

I decided to give them more ownership over the banner they would create and I split the class into team of 3 and 4 to come up with designs using the themes we had discussed. This worked really well. I called the class back to the floor after 15 minutes of drawing to discuss what they had come up with. I then explained that we had various colours of large squares of felt and that they must decide in their group what colour would be best for their designs. This was a great opportunity to develop their decision-making and negotiating skills whilst in a team. They responded very well and although some team picked the same colour, they were able to come up with solutions that worked for everybody.

The next challenge for the teams was to decide how each person in their team would contribute to the design on the felt square. Each team took an individual approach to this. Some took it turns to do their own picture, some clearly divided up the square into four of three, some gathered around and all drew at the same time, and some where happy to instruct the others in the group and not take part in the actual drawing themselves.

After some time I demonstrated how to cut a hole in the felt to attached it to the banner and called on a volunteer to demonstrate it also and after they had completed this we decided on the layout of the banner by voting and some of the group helped to attach the squares to the banner.

Feedback: ‘That was good’