Summer 2013- Mountfield Primary School

Over the past few weeks, I've been working at a Primary school quite close to where I live. I thought it would be good to get some experience while I've got some spare time. The last couple of weeks, I've been working with Year 3's on a small art project. Each year were given a blank, square, wooden board and a word. With this word they had to work in whatever way they wanted to produce a colourful, eyecatching, inspirational board to represent that word. The idea was to collect a variety of wonderful boards and display them somewhere in the school. The words included: goals, growth, enjoyment, ambition and many more. The teachers had produced their boards in small groups, back in June on the training day. They had set the bar, and I was determined , along with the children, to produce something even better. So...we got to work. Emma (one of the teachers for year 3) started the lesson so everyone was settled, and then now again, sent a couple of students to the back of the room, to work with me. Our word was achievement. So, I got each student to have a little think about what they had achieved this year. Ideas popped up such as: swimming, maths, history, reading, writing etc. I decided to let the students work individually as each of them had their own ideas of how they wanted their piece to look. We discussed their ideas thoroughly and thought of ways of how they could display this on the board. Nearly every student started off by drawing on white card and then either, colouring in or adding different materials to it. At times I found it quite difficult to let them do what they wanted, as they all seemd to want to draw a tiny little drawing in the centre of a page. I know I'm used to working with people my age and producing something to a certain standard, therfore I shouldnt expect their work to be perfect...however I still wanted the board to look good! Nevertheless, I got on with it and tried to help their ideas expand and with it the size of their drawings! It was great to work with the kids; I learnt a lot from it. It was lovely to think that I could have been inspiring them to enjoy art and then go onto do it later on in life. Once all the students had produced some work to put on the board, I then went away to stick everything down and make the end piece look less messy than it could have been if the kids had stuck it down. I'm pleased with the final board; I know it's not how I would have done it, however I think that I made it into something with what I had. Yes, it is busy, but I think that truly represents the students creative minds and how they see things. It was brilliant to experience working one on one with the kids, as I got a taste of what it would be like to have responsibility for a group of young children when teaching.

(Year 3's Final Board)

Once I had finished Year 3's board, I was asked to finish Year 1's. Most of it had already been done and all I needed to do, was work with small groups of children to create little people to place on it. It makes more sense, if you see and  images first!

(Year 1's Final Board) 

So...I helped the children make the small people...make sense now?! Heather (teaching assistant) gave me some examples of how she wanted them to look, so I took these and made a template from them. I cut out different shapes from foam and card so that it meant that the children could just stick the shapes onto the template and decorate it how they wanted. Once again, I found this a bit tricky as there was a way  I wanted the people to look, but the children didn't always stick to this. Nevertheless, I realised that this was just them finding their own style, so their person could stand out. Once all the children had finished I stuck the foam people on with super glue, so they stood out off the board. 

I also worked with small groups of students on writing tasks; it was good to get more of a taste of teaching. I've really enjoyed myself at Mountfield Primary School, everyone was so welcoming; students and teachers. It was great working with the kids; at times it was draining as they needed your full attention all the time, nevertheless, it was great watching their enthusiasm for everything. These past few weeks have made it clear to me that if I decided to teach, I would have to work in a secondary school or higher education, as I would want to specialise in textiles/art with older children/adults. It would be great to inspire people to love art and then go on to do it.  

PE Task 2

This year has been so different to anything I've done before. I've not only been away from home, around different people and in a different environment, but also the structure of university has been so different from school and college. Textiles design for fashion was the first project I did and was quite challenging for me. Initially, I worked very carefully; restricting myself to what research I collected and my drawing. I cared too much about and how “pretty” my work looked and this held me back. Nevertheless, my tutor soon realised and pushed me to experiment more. This is where I started to enjoy and appreciate the project. I experimented with print designs and technical drawing. I've never done technical garment drawings before; it took me a couple of goes to get my head around it, but it soon clicked. Everyone else found it tedious and boring but I secretly loved it; there was something about having a neat, finished garment flat sitting on the page of my sketchbook. 

Tip Final Design Board

The second term came more naturally to me; I felt more at home and I had more direction. The print unit made me think about colour palettes and motif placement. Initially I found it difficult to pick colours out of my images; for some reason I was doing it completely wrong. However, my tutor explained where I was going wrong; after this, I could pick colours for my palettes quickly and accurately. I didn't enjoy working in the print room as much; I found it really stressful! I couldn't seem to get my dyes correct, and as a perfectionist, I found this very difficult. I didn't enjoy being in that environment either; I felt slightly claustrophobic. I would love to specialise in print next year, however I don’t think I’ll be using the print room as much; I find using digital print more inspiring and enjoyable. Nevertheless, I will still have those techniques in the back of my mind, as I will always be able to bring my digital prints to the table and work on top of them. 

Collection of final digital prints

I haven’t enjoyed Unit X as much as the other projects; I found it quite slow and difficult at times. It was hard to get the entire group together; nonetheless in the last couple of weeks we worked really well as a team and produced a good final piece. I do think it has been useful to experience working collaboratively as this is what it will be like in the industry. At the minute, I would really like to specialise in print and eventually become a print designer for fashion. I find it fascinating how one simple idea or drawing can turn into an intricate print. However there are many aspects of my work, I want to focus on and improve next year. When finding visual research, I need to look further; I sometimes find myself pulling myself back scared of jumping ahead. Also, even though I didn't enjoy working in the print room very much, I think it would be wise to experiment a little more, as there’s so much I still have to explore. Finally, I really want to find my own style within my work, but this will come with time.  

Who will come to see it?

With our exhibition finished and up, all that was left to do was to be around for when the public came to see our work. I was quite surprised as to how many people turned up to the venue to have a look. Most of the people were students or tutors from the university however we did have a few members of the public coming in. It was nice to hear good comments about our work and to see that people appreciated it. 

Even though waiting around for a few hours got a little boring towards the end, it did go quite quickly and Gabi and I had an interesting chat with and man called Marcus Lord. Marcus works at MMU as the business development manager of art and design. He was asking us what we thought of the unit as a whole and what the background of our work was. He went on to explain the ideas behind Unit X and I think something clicked in mine and Gabi's heads. Marcus explained that when he had  meetings with companies outside of the universities, they would always say that, yeah graduates are great, but they have no experience with working collaboratively, getting their points across,  explaining their work and the list went on. Marcus went onto to explain that this is why they believe unit x is so important; it gives us so much experience for the working world and also puts us in a better place for getting jobs- employers will actually want us. Next year, unit x is all about working with others who want to go into the same industry/area as you. I think this will be really interesting and extremely useful. 

Even though this unit hasn't been my favourite, I now know why we're doing it and I truly believe that it will help us tremendously for our future. I think if we had Marcus introducing the project, we would have come away wanting to get on with it and understand why we were doing it. 

Evaluation

I've never done a project like Unit X! I've had a mixture of feelings about it! At first I was very confused as to what was expected of us and what it was all about. I then met my group and we started  to discuss ideas; this is when I started to do research, get inspiration and started to enjoy the project. I enjoyed developing my drawings; experimenting with shapes, motifs and colour. I also enjoyed working on our concept; at first I thought it was going to be focusing on sketching portraits but it was much more. It was interesting experimenting with what motifs I could get from the initial image of a face. I didn't want it to look actually like a face, I wanted it to be an interesting shape from the lines and detail within the face. 

I found working in a group fun but very difficult at times. It was very rare that every single person came to a tutorial or group meeting.  It has only been the last couple of weeks where I have seen everyone at the same time. It was very disappointing at times and it made me a little down. At some points I would think to myself why do I even bother. I feel that I do so much work but a couple of people won't even bother or will do it eventually but will be rushed and sometimes unfinished. I think when you work as a group, you need to be organised and for me as a very organised person (sometimes too much), I never understand when people can't meet deadlines and be on time. Quite a few times we would set deadlines and tasks for ourselves within the group and most times a couple of us would turn up to the meeting with the work but nearly everyone else wouldn't.  I don't think that's fair. I would feel so guilty if I hadn't done the work as your group are relying on you. Most of the time we couldn't develop and move on as a group because most of the peoples work wasn't there. We were meant to be doing a collaborative piece, so without seeing the others development work, the group as a whole couldn't develop. Don't get me wrong, there were some really good days, where I would come out of a group meeting or tutorial and think, yeah we've got some good ideas. But there's a difference between ideas and doing the actual work. Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist and too organised but I still believe when you're working within a group, you should always be on the ball, on time and do the work. I found myself throughout this project, having to take control of the group with a couple of other members, just to get things moving. At first I didn't want to seem bossy etc but as the project went on, I gave in and started to come out as one of the leaders of the group. I haven't necessarily got a problem with that, but when you all get on well, it's difficult to take control and tell people what to do, especially when you like them. I'm sure there are a few members of the group who found me irritating at times, but at the end of the day, a couple of people had to do something about organisation! I just wish our group could have worked together as hard as we have the past couple of weeks. We've been working like a well-oiled machine at times; getting a lot of work done and at a good speed because we've been working together. 

Having said all of that, I like everyone in my group; I get on with them so well and they're all lovely people. We always have a laugh when we're together and it seems quite natural. I hope I stay close with everyone, as I've really enjoyed spending time with them. I think our  Facebook group has also worked really well. We will communicate basically every day on the group; letting each other know times of things, if someone can't turn up to a meeting, pictures of our work etc. So in that case, we have worked really well as a group, but I just wish we worked that well in person. 

We still have no idea what happened to the two film & media students we were meant to have in our group; they never showed up. We did try to get in touch with them and we told our tutors, however we never saw them. At times I felt the unit could have been organised a bit better (no offence to anyone). A lot of the time I didn't get emails and notifications that other members of my group got. I think this is maybe because they are all fashion students, but I'm still part of Unit X too. I do understand that there are so many tutors involved with this project so communication could have broken down at points, but maybe this could have been prevented somehow. I'm the sort of person to need a time and place to be in advance; I'm not very good at dealing with last minute adjustments, so at times I found this quite difficult. If I had a problem, I honestly didn't know who to contact; I'm not sure if we had certain tutors to help our group...I'm just not sure.

On a happier note (sorry for being so miserable) I really enjoyed actually producing the work. Like I said before, the development, sketching and experimenting with placement got me more engaged with this unit. I'm pleased our groups theme/concept was so interesting and I truly believe that when it came to our theme, the journey was clear. I think this unit has made me prepared for working life; I'm going to come across people who don't work as hard as me and I'm going to have to deal with it. Also there may be a lack of communication within a job, and again, I would have to deal with it somehow. All in all I have enjoyed this project and I'm really pleased with my groups exhibition, I've produced work I wouldn't usually produced and worked with people I wouldn't usually work with. 

It's up and finished!

After the stress of yesterday, we all went away to sew the small acetates together. We decided to have them in lines of 4,5 and 6 as it would give different levels and wouldn't just look like a curtain. So this morning we made our way to our space to put them all up. As the tutors were meant to be coming at around 10.30am, we went earlier so everything was up and they could see it finished instead of being all over the place. It didn't take us too long to hang them all up, we just decided where to put them and then got on with it. The owners of the shop had already got spot and standing lights out for us, so we explored where the lights would work best. We wanted light to shine through the acetate and fill the room with colour so we experimented and finally  found a place we were all happy with. I'm really, quite pleased with our exhibition. It looks powerful; the acetate faces in front of the boards add more distortion and the stained  glass effect with the light shining through adds warmth and mood to the room. 

When waiting for Eleanor and Robin to come and see our work, I tried to keep myself busy as I was a little nervous, therefore I took quite a few photos. I think our work looks even better photographed as you can focus on certain faces  and blur the rest. But I eventually had to face the tutors...THEY LIKED IT!! Success! I was so pleased that they liked our exhibition;  after last weeks tutorial I was half anticipating they would come in and make us take it down! However, they didn't, they actually liked it!! The only thing they commented on was that they thought we needed a sign and a bit of information about our work, maybe put it on a blank wall to fill some space. Apart from that, it was good! 

Even though I had  already made posters and they were put up in various places, I decided  to make another one tonight. I wanted to use a more powerful image from today as it could draw more people in. I've emailed it to tutors, inviting them along and also sent it to members of the group to put up. Last week we produced a facebook,event so I think we've done quite well with advertising.  We'll just have to see how popular it actually is!

Getting our exhibition up.

Yesterday, we decided that the plan for today was to meet in the art school with our 15 panels and 25 small acetates printed out ready. We would then go to the A4 & more store in the art school to get 12 A4 foam mounting boards, mark out where the work would go on the boards, stick them down and take them to our space and put them up. This didn't exactly go to plan. Not everyone had printed their work out for various reasons. This was a bit frustrating as we wasted a lot of time. A few of us had to sit around waiting for people to turn up and print their work out, which was really not what we wanted to do. After getting a bit twitchy we decided to just go and buy the foam board and do as much as we could with who and what we had. We started to explore how many panels we could put on a board to make it look effective. We decided that we would fill the board; panel to panel. At first I wasn't sure, as I thought it looked very cluttered, but then realised that it could look quite powerful when all the boards were next to each other. 

We had to wait a bit for others to print everything out, but finally we got sticking everything down. Working as a team, some of us spray mounting and some used double sided sticky tape (depending on what  paper was used) and before we knew it, we were all done. This was probably the best part of today as we finally got to see all of our work together and...it looked good!

Even though we didn't want to admit it, Eleanor was right; four A1 boards would have looked pathetic! At that moment we realised that, yeah, it was going to look quite good!

So with our boards finished, fueled up and ready to go, we trooped off to Incognito. Last week, Gabi and I were told that the space would be clear and cleaned, however this wasn't the case. Everyone else, who hadn't seen the space were a bit shocked at the state of it, but we knew that we just had to get on. We moved everything out of the way, swept the floors, removed all rubbish and finally started to get everything up. It took a  while to decide where to put each board as we wanted the "good" boards at eye level and also in a straight line. We used strong foam sticky pads to put them up and they worked really well. At one point we had to take a couple of boards off the wall and move them, and it was quite difficult to pull off! Nevertheless, after moving the boards about a bit, they were all up in no time. It was good how well we worked as a team today, although some people needed some encouragement to get a move on and help, we did all put the boards up; it wasn't just a couple of people. 

As some of the group hadn't printed and cut out the small acetates, we couldn't hang them up today so we went back to uni to sort that out. We divided them up, so when we came to sewing them together, we all had a selection of faces. I'm not so bothered anymore about not being able to hang them up today, as we have time tomorrow morning before the tutors come to check on us. All in all, a productive day!

Busy weekend!

This weekend has been VERY busy. It's been made up of producing 15 A4 panels, 25 small acetates and non-stop group updates on Facebook  It's been good that we've been keeping each other updated on Facebook as it's meant that we can share ideas and also keep people positive through a hard weekend. I'm quite pleased with my panels; I've used both mine and   members of the groups images, included motifs and also made every one look slightly different.  I have made sure that each panel has included drawings of my own; whether that was motifs, exaggerated fine liner sketches or cut out typography. I got the idea of typography from a member of my group. Gabi had the idea of including feelings through words; she collected many different feelings, typed them out and used them within her work. When I was talking to her, we decided that the typography could work within my panels as well. I really enjoyed working with this idea; I printed the sheet of words out onto acetate and used them within my motifs and also as separate elements. A couple of members in my group used stitching within their work, therefore I decided to use the typography but cut them and use them as thin strips, to replicate stitching. I think that it's been really good that we've shared and used each others ideas; it truly shows that we have worked collaboratively. 

I used many different materials to create my work: watercolour paints, fine liner,  acetate, felt tip pen etc. I feel that the use of watercolour worked well as it meant that the face could be seen through the design and it also added texture as you can slightly see the brush strokes at times. The sketching using fine liner also added texture as well as a slightly graphical style; adding quirkiness to my work. I like my work to have a depth about it and I believe produced this; from texture  being created through the materials used, placement of acetates overlapping images and also the  mixture of different motifs/images used in one panel, my work is interesting and individualistic.

I'm pleased I've focused on developing motifs within this project as I made sure I linked everything with textiles. I didn't want to move away from print throughout this project, as that's what I've come to uni to do. Even though Unit X is all about collaboration; exploring different areas and seeing what it's like to work within a group, it would be silly to go in the opposite direction of what I want to do. Even though I don't think it's my best work, within our group and what we decided to do, I think it's worked well. I've worked well on my panels; using time consuming techniques and also not restricting my ideas too much.