Creative Learning - mixing traditional and digital techniques
This page is under development
In my own practice I often use discarded or outdated technologies, and also mix low and hi-tech in creative learning with positive outcomes. Physical creative processes can enhance individuals understanding of digital – and vice-versa. For example, digital manipulation concepts like cutting and pasting can be linked to physical processes like collage and photomontage, developing confidence and understanding as well as tactile knowledge. The projects below show some examples of these approaches.
Focal Point Gallery Silver Arts Award group 2019
For their Unit 2 Leadership project, the group created a short film, mixing model making, traditional stop-motion animation, and contemporary digital filming and editing techniques.
The resultant film was shown on The Forum's Big Screen for one week during February/ March 2019. Mixing approaches allowed the group to draw on individual skills and to develop collective approaches, rather than "one size fits all", as well as giving them an opportunity to develop learning in new areas.
...you have demonstrated an effective and impressive use of clay animation, stop-motion,
modelling, sound and text. In using these, you have brought them together to form
your narrative to form a simple yet light-hearted and accessible film for an extended
audience in Elmer Square. Big Screen Co-ordinator James Ravinet
The resultant film was shown on The Forum's Big Screen for one week during February/ March 2019. Mixing approaches allowed the group to draw on individual skills and to develop collective approaches, rather than "one size fits all", as well as giving them an opportunity to develop learning in new areas.
...you have demonstrated an effective and impressive use of clay animation, stop-motion,
modelling, sound and text. In using these, you have brought them together to form
your narrative to form a simple yet light-hearted and accessible film for an extended
audience in Elmer Square. Big Screen Co-ordinator James Ravinet
Bow Arts cross-school partnerships - 2018
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This project developed two cross-school partnerships focusing on SEND and digital engagement. Each involved one mainstream school and one specialist SEND school, working to design and make light tools (using simple electronics and up-cycled materials), and to collaborate on creating the light painting (using digital techniques). It involved young people with a range of physical and learning access requirements, involving Key Stage 2 and 3 students.
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Focal Point Gallery/Richmond Avenue School - Start
Start is a UK-wide programme that aims to reach children who are missing out on a creative and cultural education. Focal Point Gallery developed a Start-funded programme running from 2017-2020 for children aged 8-11. Working with artist Rachel McGivern and Richmond school, based in Shoebury, we developed a series of gallery based and in-school workshops responding to the current exhibitions and mixing digital and analogue techniques to give the children access to and understanding of creative learning.
2017
- Art/Science day & teachers CPD for Northwick Primary School, Canvey - images & text to follow
- Guest Artist, Open Arts: Creative wellbeing sessions for BAME participants with mental health referrals - images & text to follow.Open Arts
- Mixing old and new tech Teacher’s CPD session for ROH Bridge
- Guest Artist, Open Arts: Creative wellbeing sessions for BAME participants with mental health referrals - images & text to follow.Open Arts
- Mixing old and new tech Teacher’s CPD session for ROH Bridge
2016 - Harbinger Primary School (for Bow Arts Education)
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“A Map of the Isle of Dogs” - digital imagery on dibond, 119 x 168 cm 2016
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Working with two Year 6 classes and teachers from Harbinger Primary this project explored the history and identity of the Isle of Dogs. Explorations built around different aspects of mapping - walks, drawing, cut-ups and collage, stories and poetry - the project gave students the opportunity contribute to a collective artwork leaving a visual legacy as they make the transition to secondary school.
“I have learnt and realised that there are small things on the Isle of Dogs that we see every day but we don't realise how special they actually are until we leave them”
The map incorporates layers – of history, children’s personal journeys, of contemporary life on the island, text and image. Now installed in the school's dining hall, it provides new pupils with an opportunity to explore their environment through someone else's experiences. The project was featured in the article The Art of the Island on the Bow Arts website.
“I have learnt and realised that there are small things on the Isle of Dogs that we see every day but we don't realise how special they actually are until we leave them”
The map incorporates layers – of history, children’s personal journeys, of contemporary life on the island, text and image. Now installed in the school's dining hall, it provides new pupils with an opportunity to explore their environment through someone else's experiences. The project was featured in the article The Art of the Island on the Bow Arts website.
Family Art Day; Focal Point Gallery (June 2016)
'The Peculiar People’ was an exhibition and event series tracing the history of ideological and social-political communal living experiments in Essex throughout the 20th Century to the present day. Building our own model Utopia was therefore an appropriate response. In this collaboration with artist Nastassja Simensky we used drawing and cardboard construction to create an alternative vision of Southend - our own utopia. Bunnies, underground trains and ice cream shops proliferated amongst parks, houses, restaurants and schools. The build process was recorded as a time-lapse animation.
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2015
River Crouch Festival - work with Riverside School, Hullbridge, and Collingwood School, South Woodham Ferrers (April-July '15). See separate project page via link above.
2014
QEOP/Space studios: School's (Not Quite) Out for Summer
This programme supported creative learning through a range of innovative workshops in SPACE’s artist studios and explorations into Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Participants were able to learn about how artists get ideas, face challenges and are inspired to make new work. My projects involved building on how we experience and navigate spaces we live and play in, using themes of mapping and avatar making to explore the park and our connections to it. By mixing digital photography and hands-on making (using discarded book imagery), we also created park avatars – combining real and imagined characterisations as a basis for our projected and remembered journeys. Mixing high and low tech approaches can be a useful way of stretching resources as well as individual/group creativity.
"Dyspraxic Me" workshop
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Held at Shape's Westfield Gallery during October, this workshop co-incided with Dyspraxia Awareness week. Members of the "Dyspraxic Me" support group created images relating to their experiences of dyspraxia, which can affect co-ordination, planning, and motor skills, amongst other impacts. The images below were selected by individuals to demonstrate how the most seemingly everyday of objects can become an obstacle requiring time and energy to negotiate, or which can support and liberate.
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WYWH digital workshops for LibraryFest in West Berkshire; working with adults and young people we created our content using photography, video, collage, image manipulation software, and storytelling to create the history of the Theale Library Band - "the hardest working band in showbusiness", with the toughest (and most surreal) riders. Mixed with music and animated in Popcorn Maker, you can follow the band to find out more about it's members, outrageous demands, and the notorious stage-diving incident....
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In the BandFor Focal Point Gallery's Family Arts Festival.
Inspired by Jemima Stehli’s exhibition ‘Endears me, yet remains’, participants were transformed into members of our model band by mixing collage, digital and photographic techniques (with Alan Hockett). |
2013
"Southend Sunshine" workshop for Focal Point Gallery's Family Arts Festival, mixing sun printing, relief printmaking and sound (with Stuart Bowditch and Lee Sullivan)
Get Creative: 3-day residential for NDCS Rochford Art Collector Series - workshops with Great Wakering Teen Cafe, creating the seventh artwork for the series - TrailR - using a mix of digital (GPS, scanning, photography) and traditional techniques (drawing, collage, tracing). Play Southend - Targeted workshops within the larger Play Southend project, developing a collective vision of Southend created by its communities, that can then be entered and played by people all over the world. Driving Inspiration - workshops for Creative Bucks project linking Paralympic sport, the arts, and diversity On the Line - The Lost Property Office, developed with Treetops School (see project page) |
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2012
Georingtones: Workshop element of the 'Sparks Will Fly...' commission, a digital treasure hunt based on the popular geocaching game. Caches are planted at three locations across Essex; as well as behaving as normal caches, inside Geocachers will find a code. This can be used to help play and create ring tones made up of sounds recorded as part of the project.
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Intergen East: Intergenerational project for Studio 3 Arts
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2011
- Project 2013, Southend High School for Girls: Linked to their 'Project 2013' centenary I worked with students over three days to develop and record interviews with old girls, culminating in the creation of the Locker Listening post, a prototype installation to stimulate project development. The installation contains extracts from the interviews focusing on social and attitudinal changes which paralleled uniform change. "…Although it never happened to me it was rumoured that Mr Senger would measure the length of your skirt when you were kneeling down, it had to be so many inches above the ground or something…they had to be long enough, there were no short skirts... "...I used to have to wear a green and white stripy shirt, and the students next door used to call us 'Pacers', because you used to get these green and white stripy spearmint sweets that looked the same in those days... |
Exhibited at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff and also at Essex Record Office
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- Launchpad sound and Music day for deaf young people (Z!NC)
2010/11 Intergen Intergenerational photographic project across four London Boroughs, for Studio 3 Arts
2010/11 Intergen Intergenerational photographic project across four London Boroughs, for Studio 3 Arts
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2010
- Double Trouble film project, Grove Wood Primary (Creative Partnerships). Six week project with Stuart Bowditch to make a stop-motion animation and soundtrack with year 2 and 4 students at Grove Wood school in Rayleigh, Essex. You can see the full animation here - Artist of the Future ECC one-to-one mentoring project with young artist Emmie Hubbard. Read more here - Drawbots & Music Interactive toy & music workshop for RAD (with Ruth Montgomery) - Projection Mediabox funded project with deaf teenagers (Focal Point Gallery) |
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2009/10 Tillingham Borrowers, St Nicholas Primary, Tillingham (Creative Partnerships)
Design/construction project working with two classes (years 1 and 2/3) from October 09 to March 10. Drawing on the Mary Norton book 'The Borrowers', children explored the school outdoor environment using photography, design, camouflage, construction, and team working to look at their world from the perspective of tiny borrowers. The project also allowed staff to draw on concepts of recycling, communicating, reading and writing.
"I didn't know we were actually learning because it was so much fun."
"I didn't know we were actually learning because it was so much fun."