Upcycled Art Collection and Exhibition

Textile artist Ruth Turnbull and I worked with Hollywood Primary School to create their own art collection made from scrap materials based on ecology themes for an  end-project exhibition.

This was an entirely pupil-led Creative Partnerships project we devised with teacher Angie Jones ultilising scrap materials linking to the curriculum themes of ecology through maths, literacy and science.

Ruth and I showed the children how to approach creative making giving them key skills in selecting and attaching materials – the pupils, with a little guidance here and there – did the rest, designing and making their objects throughout the project.

The children were inspired to make an impromptu cork installation representing some of their facts and figures on the morning of the exhibition. Ace!

Woodsetton Special School’s Pony

I worked with Woodsetton Primary Special School to create their pony for the Brierly Hill Pony Trail, Summer 2010

The designs the children had done were really exciting but I was worried about me having to do a lot of the painting to complete the design when it really was their pony to experience, not mine. We wanted to make sure all children were able to take part and enjoy working on the pony so I suggested we used ink and fingers so that everyone could make their unique mark on the pony. It really worked,  a great day was had by all!  You can see the ponies this Summer around Brierley Hill in the Black Country.

The finished article! He is really lovely and made entirely from happy little fingers. The children have called him Clopper and the school has made a great time lapse video of the day. View it here

I also worked with Stourbridge College to offer them a few ideas of how to approach designing their pony. The talk I gave was centred on public art and the issues surrounding it.

Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum

This workshop coincided with the Worcester Open Exhibition:

Inspired by some of the artists’ postcard art in the main exhibition, the children reinterpreted postcards to create their own works of art:

Before and after:

Collage to rival a cubist:

3D swan effect:

Walsall Leather Museum Workshops

Here’s some images of upcycling workshops I’ve run at Walsall Leather Museum (which is a great little museum with a beautiful garden and a bostin cafe).

These butterflies and birds were made with templates I made from scrap industrial card so that children can make them again at home with scrap paper, junk mail etc..

Here we made houses from old card and printed with bits of scrap:

The tools:

Final Game

Painting the final game onto the playground

The end game:

Nearly finished game with number tasks to the right

Swineapples Nooz

Acting out Fictional Disaster News Stories

This Spring I have been working with Year 7 form group “Malvern” at Hillcrest School in the Black Country making Creative News. We have created a whole raft of topical news stories for our news blog Swineapples Nooz and have used a range of techniques from digital and instant photography to dramatizing fictional disasters.

5-Day Mega Quick Mural: Painting

We started by basing-out the main areas of block colour:

Lots of green and red!

Lots of brush-washing:

Base-layers completed:

Practising and experimenting with adding definition and shading to the green globes in the logo design:

Working on the lettering/adding finishing touches:

Close-up of the lettering technique – we applied red paint over the green to give the edge of the letters definition that was more subtle than a regular black edge (to keep to the computer graphic feel of the design and avoid a cartoon-like look).

Mural nearly complete – the sunburst and lettering need a little more work. Final pictures to come soon!

5-Day Mega Quick Mural: Documenting

Throughout the project we documented each step of the creative process.

The girls photographed and filmed various stages. They made a group video diary and individual journals.

Journal making:

Journal examples:

Another page in progress:

Making the Video Diary paper edit:

Putting the paper edit into action:

5-Day Mega Quick Mural: Planning

In March 2010 I worked with 4 Gifted and Talented girls in Year 8 to create a small mural of their school logo on the school stage back wall and film and photograph the entire process and make a video diary and journals from the documentation. No mean feat for 5 school-hour days!

Here’s my original quick plan but we decided to go with a modified, less cartoon-like version in the end:

After a brief planning session we decided to use a simple, easy projection method of getting the image on the the wall as the area was fairly small, the image needed to be precisely centred and we didn’t have much time.

We then traced around the design:

With all of us tracing we finished in around 5 minutes – these girls work fast!

Awards

Back in July I received a highly commended certificate for the Top Gun Award at the Black Country Creative Partnerships “We’re Flying High Event”. It was a great day out and so nice to see so many young people enjoying celebrating their creative work.

a great day at RAF Cosford.

The event

A plane