Sunday, 19 February 2012
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Monday, 6 February 2012
The Mysterious River of Gold
Hi Guys.
Today was the day of the delivery of are live project ''The Mysterious River of Gold'' performed written and devised by Class 12 at Deneholm School. First a big thank you to the Class who completely pulled it out of the bag performance wise, and did Laura proud in more ways than one..The short performance was a reaction to our meeting just under a month ago..Within the month of us meeting Laura has worked hard with the class developing the story and design elements, which collimated in a two day Arts and craft roundabout experience for the Class taking in Sound creation and production, Scenic art, Prop making and design as well as music making and rehearsal time..all of this came together this morning at 11am.this is a very abridged version of events but thought it would be nice to put something up..included are some picks of the set element..
Today was the day of the delivery of are live project ''The Mysterious River of Gold'' performed written and devised by Class 12 at Deneholm School. First a big thank you to the Class who completely pulled it out of the bag performance wise, and did Laura proud in more ways than one..The short performance was a reaction to our meeting just under a month ago..Within the month of us meeting Laura has worked hard with the class developing the story and design elements, which collimated in a two day Arts and craft roundabout experience for the Class taking in Sound creation and production, Scenic art, Prop making and design as well as music making and rehearsal time..all of this came together this morning at 11am.this is a very abridged version of events but thought it would be nice to put something up..included are some picks of the set element..
Meeting the nuns
Well, it has been a bit of a whirlwind start to the new year!
As we explained at our last meeting together, we identified some themes with the girls in the first session we did on 6th January using a model from the 'write an opera project' and played a name + adjective game as an icebreaker. Gabrielle led these two elements of the session while I led on ' taking a line for a walk', asking the girls to think about the whole day from getting up in the morning to going home.
After discussing these line maps briefly, the girls labelled the different points of the day so that I could take the maps away with me and copy them. I am still finding them a really useful reference point for their likes/dislikes in terms of school subjects, and as a consequence may now try it with the university students I teach on a Tuesday.
Dina's lessons with this group are an hour and ten minutes long from 9am and the time disappears really quickly. She has to structure the session and keep an eye on how it might relate to their GCSE syllabus whilst trying to encourage independent creative learning.
The classroom is a bit of a tight squeeze for 16 art students, so it was great to release them into the rest of the school on 13th January. They had keys to all sorts of spaces they would not normally have access to and staff whose spaces we invaded were very accomodating. What started out as a walking tour to build an awareness of the architecture of the building - sound, smell, movement through it, rapidly developed into the telling of ghost stories provoked by the small details of the building such as the only stairpost with four crosses on it, and the strangely proportioned window. Their energy and enthusiasm was immense.
The most important thing for me was to say ' I don't know, tell me about it' and listen to what they said.
They photographed as they went around and, as Gabrielle wasn't able to be there for this session, they agreed to make powerpoint presentations to show her when they came to the Production Park.
I had hoped to introduce them to Windows Movie Maker but this was not available on the school system and we ran out of time to find it. However, Dina downloaded it and showed them how to use it in the interim.
Thursday 26th January - Girls visit to High House Production park.
We identified during our planning sessions on 20th/21st that sound was going to play a big part in what we did. We felt it was important to bring a sound artist on board to show the girls
what they might be able to do with their recordings. I have increasingly come to love working with sound but had no understanding of how a soundscape is put together. Nick explained the process to them in terms of a landscape painting which I thought was an ingenious way to approach this technology with art students.
We asked them to bring their favourite tracks with them and using one of these, Nick demonstrated how music and voice ( from the walk around the school) could be edited together. This was the first time they had heard their voices back from the recording and their opinions of what they sounded like were wide and varied.
The biggest lesson for us that day was to check that we are all operating on compatible systems - we are now in 2012 but still PC's and MACs don't like one another. The Windows Movie Maker movies the girls had made would not come up, so they shared their sketchbooks with Gabrielle instead.
My other observation really endorsed for me the Open Space process I have worked with before - that some of the most creative conversations happen in the coffee break. In this case, it was while quequing for the toilets that I learned most about the girls other interests and talents - singers, guitar players, piano players etc! This chat out of school and out of uniform felt like a very equal exchange and we developed this into a student-led skills audit later in the day.
We started the afternoon with a quick physical warm up - a much exaggerated and louder version of the icebreaker I did with all of you (have never done this with a group of young people before!) We then split the girls into smaller groups to create their own stories and sites/models within the seminar room building on the walk. Nick recorded these short stories that became like playground chants/rhymes and each group shared their 'site' and started to think about where their audience might be in relation to their installation.
I have it on reliable authority from Dina that the drive to get the girls back in time for the school bus was rather hairy.
An absolutely exhausting day...and so to the third and final discovery of the day...all will be well and all manner of things will be well if you debrief in the wine bar in John Lewis at Bluewater!!!
3rd February - Nick and I went into school. I took the other half of the group out this time with Edna, the former school secretary and volunteer minbus driver who told us what many areas of the school used to be and how much it had been adapted and changed. amongst other things we visited a small room in the roof which had been a nun's bedroom. It was very marked how different this group was in personnality to the previous one - much quieter and some scorn for the active imaginations of the other half of the group. We recorded interviews they had done with family members and teachers with previous/long standing relationships with the school picking up thmes of bands/music, memories of loved ones and teenagers identified in the first session. We voted on a space to make our final event in...and finally at lunchtime, we got to go over too the house and meet the nuns - Sister Rita and Sister Rita!
I took six of the girls with me - the house is such a tranquil sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the school. Sister Rita and Sister Rita were so welcoming, taking time to talk to each of the girls, answer their questions. They were incredibly knowledgeable about the modern world that the girls live in and thoughtful on their perception of teenagers. One of the girls said it was the best day in school she had ever had and they are all very keen to visit more regularly. I am hoping next week that we might be able to record Sister Rita singing a song from her childhood. The challenge now is to focus this all down in to a tangible achievable project outcome, but if it has re-ignited this moving dialogue between generations, then there is already the fragment of a legacy I will be very happy with.
If I end up with half the energy, drive and focus that Dina has on a Friday, that will be a bonus! Fiona
As we explained at our last meeting together, we identified some themes with the girls in the first session we did on 6th January using a model from the 'write an opera project' and played a name + adjective game as an icebreaker. Gabrielle led these two elements of the session while I led on ' taking a line for a walk', asking the girls to think about the whole day from getting up in the morning to going home.
After discussing these line maps briefly, the girls labelled the different points of the day so that I could take the maps away with me and copy them. I am still finding them a really useful reference point for their likes/dislikes in terms of school subjects, and as a consequence may now try it with the university students I teach on a Tuesday.
Dina's lessons with this group are an hour and ten minutes long from 9am and the time disappears really quickly. She has to structure the session and keep an eye on how it might relate to their GCSE syllabus whilst trying to encourage independent creative learning.
The classroom is a bit of a tight squeeze for 16 art students, so it was great to release them into the rest of the school on 13th January. They had keys to all sorts of spaces they would not normally have access to and staff whose spaces we invaded were very accomodating. What started out as a walking tour to build an awareness of the architecture of the building - sound, smell, movement through it, rapidly developed into the telling of ghost stories provoked by the small details of the building such as the only stairpost with four crosses on it, and the strangely proportioned window. Their energy and enthusiasm was immense.
The most important thing for me was to say ' I don't know, tell me about it' and listen to what they said.
They photographed as they went around and, as Gabrielle wasn't able to be there for this session, they agreed to make powerpoint presentations to show her when they came to the Production Park.
I had hoped to introduce them to Windows Movie Maker but this was not available on the school system and we ran out of time to find it. However, Dina downloaded it and showed them how to use it in the interim.
Thursday 26th January - Girls visit to High House Production park.
We identified during our planning sessions on 20th/21st that sound was going to play a big part in what we did. We felt it was important to bring a sound artist on board to show the girls
what they might be able to do with their recordings. I have increasingly come to love working with sound but had no understanding of how a soundscape is put together. Nick explained the process to them in terms of a landscape painting which I thought was an ingenious way to approach this technology with art students.
We asked them to bring their favourite tracks with them and using one of these, Nick demonstrated how music and voice ( from the walk around the school) could be edited together. This was the first time they had heard their voices back from the recording and their opinions of what they sounded like were wide and varied.
The biggest lesson for us that day was to check that we are all operating on compatible systems - we are now in 2012 but still PC's and MACs don't like one another. The Windows Movie Maker movies the girls had made would not come up, so they shared their sketchbooks with Gabrielle instead.
My other observation really endorsed for me the Open Space process I have worked with before - that some of the most creative conversations happen in the coffee break. In this case, it was while quequing for the toilets that I learned most about the girls other interests and talents - singers, guitar players, piano players etc! This chat out of school and out of uniform felt like a very equal exchange and we developed this into a student-led skills audit later in the day.
We started the afternoon with a quick physical warm up - a much exaggerated and louder version of the icebreaker I did with all of you (have never done this with a group of young people before!) We then split the girls into smaller groups to create their own stories and sites/models within the seminar room building on the walk. Nick recorded these short stories that became like playground chants/rhymes and each group shared their 'site' and started to think about where their audience might be in relation to their installation.
I have it on reliable authority from Dina that the drive to get the girls back in time for the school bus was rather hairy.
An absolutely exhausting day...and so to the third and final discovery of the day...all will be well and all manner of things will be well if you debrief in the wine bar in John Lewis at Bluewater!!!
3rd February - Nick and I went into school. I took the other half of the group out this time with Edna, the former school secretary and volunteer minbus driver who told us what many areas of the school used to be and how much it had been adapted and changed. amongst other things we visited a small room in the roof which had been a nun's bedroom. It was very marked how different this group was in personnality to the previous one - much quieter and some scorn for the active imaginations of the other half of the group. We recorded interviews they had done with family members and teachers with previous/long standing relationships with the school picking up thmes of bands/music, memories of loved ones and teenagers identified in the first session. We voted on a space to make our final event in...and finally at lunchtime, we got to go over too the house and meet the nuns - Sister Rita and Sister Rita!
I took six of the girls with me - the house is such a tranquil sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the school. Sister Rita and Sister Rita were so welcoming, taking time to talk to each of the girls, answer their questions. They were incredibly knowledgeable about the modern world that the girls live in and thoughtful on their perception of teenagers. One of the girls said it was the best day in school she had ever had and they are all very keen to visit more regularly. I am hoping next week that we might be able to record Sister Rita singing a song from her childhood. The challenge now is to focus this all down in to a tangible achievable project outcome, but if it has re-ignited this moving dialogue between generations, then there is already the fragment of a legacy I will be very happy with.
If I end up with half the energy, drive and focus that Dina has on a Friday, that will be a bonus! Fiona
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Making a Start (part 3)
When Nas and Stuart came to visit Dilkes Primary and my class 5D, I was rather nervous about how the children would respond to the open'ness of the project... whatever it may be :) I had carried out a build up lesson with my class, focusing on their pre-conceived ideas about what an 'artist' does and what an artist looks like... the outcome was rather comical as the children drew round a few reluctant individuals in the class and produce their 'life size artists' (Photos attached). So when Friday came around I think they were intrigued by Stuart and Nas (for a start neither one of them had a curly moustache!). There was a giggly and nervous excitement buzzing from the children as they knew that it wasn't a normal school subject... the 'take a line for a journey task' went well however when the 'movement to music' task came up - a few characters in my class made themselves known who were not as confident as the rest to do this (These are the children I would love to see a change through our project - if only they had some self belief...).
At the end of the session they were eager for Nas and Stuart to return, asking if they could come back the following Monday :)
Maybe not quite so soon as that, but 'they will be back again' to which they cheered.
After batting a few ideas around once the children had gone home, I'm pleased to say we seem to have a few more ideas about where our project is leading us.
Hayley
At the end of the session they were eager for Nas and Stuart to return, asking if they could come back the following Monday :)
Maybe not quite so soon as that, but 'they will be back again' to which they cheered.
After batting a few ideas around once the children had gone home, I'm pleased to say we seem to have a few more ideas about where our project is leading us.
Hayley
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