The Gusserane Art Intervention: Week 1

On the 5th of October 2015, visual artist Els Dietvoorst and I (as intern) began hosting art workshops in Gusserane National School, County Wexford. As part of the Living Arts Project with Wexford Arts Centre and Wexford County Council, the workshops aim to incorporate new and artistic curriculae into primary schools and encourage the young pupils to engage their practical skills, their personal creativity and to have lots of fun in a range of media.

The format of the workshops are split into two groups: 1st, 2nd and 3rd class in one group with 4th, 5th and 6th in another.

In the first week we angaged the children with a drawing class. Els brought in a number of her own hand drawn images and asked the pupils to approach the subject of composition and form by copying a choice of 5 of the images on to an A3 sheet of blank paper. By copying the drawings, we wanted to see whether they could follow the form of the shapes and pay close attention to their perspective. As it was the first session, this was a chance for Els and I to have a look into each of their individual abilities and see how capable they were of the exercise.

With the morning workshop, referred to as the "younger" group, it was more difficult to employ a settled atmosphere due to the level of concentration because of their age. A need for singular attention and advice from myself or Els was high and we consistently had to remind the pupils to remain quiet and to keep to their own work. Despite this, a small number of the pupils approached the exercise rather well, with one or two showing appropriate skills of drawing technique. Once they had completed their first drawing, which was met with a lot of questions and initial confusion, Els then asked them to pick another image to copy and draw it in conjunction with their first and to consider spacing, size and placement and so on and so forth with the following images.

We noticed that many of the pupils would consider the image they picked momentarily and then go on to draw their own version of it rather than try to copy it's forms as exact as they could. We weren't looking for perfect renditions, however there seemd to be a problem with objects that appeared on top of other objects. One image in particular was a tree with the it's base sitting on a round disc. We had to draw attention to this image (and others with similar features) about how to draw this kind of perspective instead of allowing the pupils to just make the lines to pass through one another. This was a good point to make with them as it also gave a window for us to explain that as artists, we don't see a mistake as something wrong, just a problem that can be solved. Many of them whom felt they had made a mistake, took this lesson in their stride and asked the better question of "What can I do now?" rather than "Can I start again?".

In the afternoon we had the "older" group of children, which on first impressions was another side of the spectrum compared to earlier. With this group from the outset there was a much more composed and somewhat conservative manner from the children, once again because of their age and place in school. If anything they were extremely quiet and needed a lot more encouragement to speak up and express their opinions, however the situation allowed for more concentration and discipline in their approach. When commencing the exercise there was a lot more of them willing to be content working by themselves with little or no distraction from others. This allowed them to complete the exercise more quickly than the previous group, so Els allowed them to advance forward with it by asking them to consider their compositions and fill in the available spaces with a means of connecting the pictures together i.e. create a story out of the page as a whole etc. This is where the exercise proved more challenging for many of them which was interesting. Many of the children reverted to similar tactics of the younger group by filling in the spaces with little lines symbolising grass, a circle with lines coming out of it for a sun, a line a cross the middle of the page in the background to refer to the landscape and such others. These are of course habitual to the children, as they are taught these techniques in school yet don't ever really move past them unless they are asked to do so or manage to do so on their own terms. We drew their attention to these little traits in their pictures and asked them outright what the marks they're making really look like and to consider being more creative with how they draw these symbols. A small number of the group did however show great imagination which we wanted to bring out in them, creating a unique sotry with their pictures and finding it rather fun.

Once the workshop day had concluded, Els and I reviewed the day and the work conducted by the pupils we decided to move on next week by giving them an idea of the kind of work we do as visual artists, in order to let them become more aware of the possiblities and different media to creat art with. Plus, to give them a chance to more so observe, question and listen than a class that is just practical and that art can be taken as seriously as their other subjects.

(Unfortunately there are no photographs in this post I had forgotten my camera, however, more visuals in the following posts to come!)