Learning Outcome Five: Confidently present outcomes to an informed audience in an appropriate form

Our group and I appropriately addressed the class when we were in the school. We presented the workshops to the children at the correct learning level and gave them appropriate tasks to work on.

I was unsure about my own task (paper weaving). Before going into the school I did feel that the children would either find my task difficult or boring. However the class of children were very bright and I know that a lot of the children really did enjoy the task. Some children were faster learners than other children and could grasp the concept of paper weaving better than others. This was something I learnt on the day, which now I know seems obvious to me.

The other tasks were set at good levels for the children’s learning as well.

Overall the workshop day was a huge success, I know this because the children were never bored, or losing interest in the tasks. As they got to try out 6 different workshops by moving around the class they seemed to be more engaged with the work.

I presume the reason the children were so engaged with our tasks is because the afternoon was set out in such a completely different way than their usual classes. For once they were allowed to walk around the class every fifteen minutes. They were encouraged to create different work than the people sat next to them and they were allowed to create as much mess as they wanted. I think that this way of working was exciting to them and as they felt positively towards the work they were then able to become more creative and make exciting things.

As well as pitching to the children, we pitched our workshops to the teacher of the class beforehand. This went very well as we were all prepared for our workshops and the art afternoon. I prepared my workshop by first of all deciding what to do (paper weaving) and then doing the task myself. This gave me a rough idea of the amount of time that it would take to complete the task. I even presented the task to my sister at home and asked her to follow my instruction to try and see how it would work. I wrote a list of the materials I would need and tried to keep it as simple as possible.

This was good because when it came to doing the workshop in class I knew exactly what was needed for the task, I knew the exact method that the children should follow. This meant that I could effectively tell the teacher what my task was. Being confident in my own methods proved to the teacher that it would be a successful workshop, and it was!

Learning Outcome Four: Demonstrate the ability to work collaboratively and articulate the impact of collaboration on ther own methodology

At the start of this unit I was a bit wary when I found out that I would be working in a group. This is because I am quite a shy person and I sometimes can fall to the back of a group and be unheard. I have previously worked in a group for the last Unit X, and it was a disaster so I was expecting this unit to be very similar.

I was proven to be very very wrong. This time around went so much better than last year.

Collaborative working during this unit has been a dream come true and our group seem to have been matched together perfectly. I believe we are very lucky to have been placed together. One big thing to note about the success of our group is that we chose this option. This has meant that every member of our group has wanted to be a part of it and so this subsequently meant that we were all eager to work well together and to work towards the same goals. We all had positive attitudes towards the work load and didn’t want to put pressure on one member of the group.

As we were all eager to work together, I didn’t find it daunting to be part of group discussions or to put my own ideas forward. We have used a few methods of communication throughout the unit, phones, texting and the facebook group. The facebook group has proven to be an excellent way of communicating together as every member can see what has been posted on the group page, and this means that no member of the group has been left in the dark.

We met up on several occasions as a group, sometimes to prepare for future sessions, sometimes to talk about what we need to get done and of course, we met up at the school for our workshops and during tutorials. I have contributed a lot to the group, but so has everyone else. It has been a pleasure working with this group.

Working in a group is so different to working alone. I never knew how enjoyable it could be to share ideas before settling on making important decisions for your work. I have always felt that working alone can be stressful and irritating as trying to get a second opinion is difficult. Working together as a team has been great as it meant that as soon as anyone was stuck or confused, the answer could be put forward almost instantly as everyone was willing and wanting to help. This has made me more confident to ask for other’s opinions on my own work in the future. It has also given me more confidence in asking for help from others. This is something very important to remember for future projects.

Our group made some good decisions, for example, towards the end of the unit we decided to split into two groups as we thought that this would cover more areas and would help us to complete more work. One group went and worked in the school, while my group decided to tackle the task of sourcing materials and working towards getting a final piece made. This turned out to be a fantastic idea as we would never have achieved the work load we did if we had stayed in one big group. Although I am very very happy with the amount of work we have got done, I do feel that I would have enjoyed going back into the school one more time. I do feel that we made the best decision by splitting into two. 

This unit will affect my ways of working in the future as I will be more open to suggestions; I will seek help from others when needed. My confidence has grown during this unit from group working and I have enjoyed the challenge of working within different areas of art (three dimensional) even though it has proven to be difficult. 

Learning Outcome Three: Demonstrate creative responses through a body of work related to project options and outcomes

I feel that I have absorbed a lot of new ways of working throughout this unit. I have only ever worked in a group once before, which was not very successful. This time round the group work has been both enjoyable and professional. I believe that the key to our success during this unit was that we were all interested in getting a lot out of the unit. Our good level of communication has been a huge help to achieving our goals for the unit. I am very proud to be a member of this group and believe that we have been very lucky to have been placed together.

I will definitely bear the communication factor in mind when it comes to working collaboratively in the future. I am certain that this is the main reason that we have been running so smoothly for Unit X.

Our “body of work” has been different to my usual body of work as it is more of an experience of working within a professional context and working with live briefs. I am used to creating sketchbooks and physical work but this unit has allowed me to gain experience in working collaboratively and gaining working skills that I wouldn’t have been able to achieve during other units. So even though we may not have produced much typical artwork in this unit, we have actually created an amazing body of work within ourselves that takes a completely different form.

We have worked seamlessly as a fantastic group to produce workshops for the year three class of Northendon Primary School. Each workshop was ran to a very high standard and we were well prepared with our materials and ideas for running the classes. I was quick thinking when it came to unexpected occurrences, for example when some children were quicker at finishing the task than others, I was able to find something else for the children to do to keep them occupied.

Joel and I have been a good team when it came to sourcing materials. We went out and sourced a lot of materials from B&Q, this is important to note as part of our body of work as we were able to communicate effectively what we were looking for to members of the B&Q staff. Sourcing materials is a huge part of having a career in art and design. I believe that, although I was not confident at first as I have never done this before, our trip went very well. We even organised for the materials to be delivered to University when we were unable to find another way of transporting the goods ourselves. We had a good level of problem solving during the wood part of the task.

Learning Outcome Two: Reflect on their practice within a context of ambiguity, uncertainty and unfamiliarity.

Working within a group of mixed abilities and with people from different backgrounds has been both challenging and exciting. My background is completely different to how we were working in this project. I am based on Textiles in Practice, and my specialism is Weave. I work flat, I look at colour pattern and texture. NOT with wood..

Our big group split into two, so there was Joel and I as the designers of the final piece for the playground.

One member of our group is from the 3D course (Joel Gabb), and so as our project is circling around building a three dimensional final piece to place in the playground of the school, unfortunately that meant that there was a lot of pressure on that member to help us to figure out how the structure could be built. I am very inexperienced in working three dimensionally, and especially with our chosen material for the project (wood). At the beginning I felt confident that I could assist Joel in working out the specifics of building said structure and with deciding on the correct tools and materials to use. I have always thought that I could visualise these kinds of things and communicate my ideas well. This proved to be MUCH much harder than I thought. I went from feeling confident, to feeling completely lost and out of my depth. Despite this, I offered as much help as I could to Joel and I actually found it very interesting visualising a three dimensional outcome as this was so different to any of my previous work as a textile weaver.

So starting off I had an idea of how I thought the structure would be built, what type of wood could be used and how it could be fixed together. This came crumbling down when I saw a technician from the wood workshop who told Joel and me that we hadn’t thought of a lot of things and it turned out that it was a lot more complicated than we thought. This was a good learning curve, and if I am every working with wood again I will know that it needs a lot more researching than I previously thought. One thing I learnt was that you can’t just use any wood for outdoor use, you have to buy wood that has been treated for external use.

Another way that I have worked out of my comfort zone is by presenting workshops to the children. My way of working is very much on my own, to myself and for myself. Working with a group and presenting workshops has been a new experience which I have proven to take well to. This has given me the confidence to embrace group work in the future as I have seen how much you can achieve when working in a group and how tasks can be approached in a completely different way than on your own. This task definitely benefitted from us all working together as a group as we have been able to share the work load and bounce ideas off each other effectively to overcome issues and to all meet the same goals. 

Learning Outcome One: Demonstrate an understanding of the relevance of interdisciplinary perspectives and the professional world

During the project, working within the school in a professional context has been an eye opening experience. Prior to unit x I had no experience of working in a primary school, so when the opportunity came up I was very eager to join this group to work in the primary school. As this area of work was new to me, I was unsure what to expect. However, the duration of the project has been reassuring that working in a professional school context isn’t as scary as I thought. The experience has highlighted a few areas of professionalism that my group and I excelled in.

Being part of the Northendon Primary School group, I am confident that we have worked together within the school with a good level of professionalism. We were all punctual and reliable when sticking to the times agreed to meet at the school. Punctuality, attendance and how reliable you are when it comes to these two things are very important in the professional world. We have shown that our group can arrange a meeting time and place and stick to it to a good standard.

Our group was well organised when it came to preparing for the workshops that we had planned for the class. We had several meetings before the actual workshop days and made sure that we had the right resources to take in with us, and that each member of the group knew exactly what we would be doing. Our group communication skills started off at an average standard, but throughout the unit our group communication grew to an excellent level. We were in contact with each other most days via phone, text, or the facebook group, which meant that our standard of professionalism could be kept high. For example, if one member was unsure of something we could easily be contacted and explain things.

The first visit to the school was surprising to me, I was half expecting to be greeted by a group of excitable and unmanageable children. I was most worried about not being able to feel in control of the children and that they would not listen to my instructions. However, Vicky, the teacher spoke to us before we met the class and assured us that we could be in as little or as much control as we wanted to be. The talk before the first workshop session with the school was very helpful as it allowed us to firstly meet the teacher, and to ask certain questions such as, what did she want the children to call us by, our first names or formally with our surnames? (E.g. Vanessa or Miss Latchford) These kinds of questions were good to get out of the way straight away at this first meeting so that we were all sure from then on. We had already thought of a few questions to ask before arriving at the school, I was confident that we were well prepared. 

Overview

I chose to be placed in College One for Unit X and then chose to be part of the group to work with Northendon Primary School. I chose to do this because it is my ultimate goal to become a primary school teacher and decided that this would be a good opportunity to get some work experience in a school.

I anticipated that I would be doing some work shadowing and perhaps helping to run some classes depending on how much interaction with the children the chosen teacher would allow us to have.

When I found out that our group would be designing/making something for the school's playground I was very excited as this was not what I thought we would be doing. My first impression of the brief was positive, I was glad to hear that we would be given quite a lot of freedom with the design and that a lot of the choices were up to us, something I am not used to, I half expected there to be a lot of restrictions when it comes to the design and making of the piece.

We have been given the opportunity to create workshops for the children of the year three class of Northendon Primary School. We decided as a group that the best way to tackle the first meeting with the class would be to split the class into 6 groups (as there were 6 of us running workshops) and use a "speed dating" (for use of a better term) type structure for the afternoon. (The groups would take turns at each table and take part in each workshop, move on etc.) We had 15 minute slots for each activity, and would use the first 5 minutes to introduce ourselves, our practice and tell them about university life. We then had 10 minutes to run a workshop that related to our own practice. As I am a Textiles in Practice student based in the weave area, I decided to do some paper weaving with the children. I wasn't sure at first if the children would like my workshop, I thought that they might find it a bit boring, or maybe wouldn't grasp how it related to textile weaving. I was in fact proven wrong on this as the majority of the children seemed to like it, and had quite a lot of room for creativity during the workshop as they could create their own colour patterns and were free to experiment with different thicknesses of paper etc.

One thing that I was surprised about was how capable the children were. I was worried that they would not be interested in paper weaving, and that maybe I would lose their attention whilst talking about myself and my studies. However the children proved me wrong by being very willing to listen and some showed genuine interest, asking me questions and wanting to find out more. They were very quick to grasp what I was telling them to do, and the majority of the class listened intently to my instructions. Some were better than others at the paper weaving, and there were a couple who needed some extra help which is inevitable. I was extremely impressed by the children's positive attitudes towards learning new skills, something that I was not expecting.

Overall the day ran very smoothly, a lot better than I was expecting. I was anticipating the children to take advantage of the fact that they were not taking part in set lessons, maybe by being loud and excitable, or by not following instructions. However, they were all pretty well behaved. The children all seemed to have a great time and at the end of the class they took it in turns to tell the rest of the class what they liked most about the afternoon and the things they enjoyed learning about.

Our second visit to the school went very smoothly again. I have been very impressed with how bright the children are, I wasn't sure what kind of learning level a year three class would be at, but they were much more advanced than I thought. We got the children to design their own alien that would be used on our final piece that is being put in the playground by using promt cards that they had to follow with words on such as "six legs" and "big ears". At first I thought that the 2 hour time slot we had for the task was too long, but this actually seemed to be an appropriate time slot for the task. Some children again worked faster than others, so during the time that was left over for these children we were quick to think on our feeet by suggesting to the children that they think of names, jobs, stories about the aliens that they had created. Even though this was exactly an art and design aspect of the afternoon, I thought that this was very important to include in the afternoon as it related to university level of art and design. We, as artists, constantly use a narrative to help explain our working and thinking processes. Being able to speak about your artwork is something I have found difficult int he past and I think that this is because I haven't had much practice in this area before coming to university. I think that by encouraging this in younger learning levels, it helps to give the children these skills to work on and improve for later on in life. This is something that I have only recently realised during this unit.

Our group showed a lot of professionalism during this unit by consistently giving each other support during the unit. We were very good at keeping in contact throughout our time together, whether this be by phone, text or on our facebook group. We have arranged a few meetings seperate to the school visits and tutorials, these meetings were very important as they allowed us to prepare for our school visits and to talk about what needed to be done and who were the best people to do such tasks. I have learnt during this unit that communication is the best tool to have in a group and the fact that we have communicated so well throughout the project has definitely allowed us to excell in our working processes.

As our final piece is made of wood, I have been using a material that I have never used before. I have never worked three dimensionally and this has proved to be very challenging to me. At first I did think that I would be able to work in this way, when actually, I fond it very difficult. I was not able to project my vision of the piece as I did not have the previous knowledge of how my vision cuold actually be made into a real piece. Despite this, the process has been an eye opening experience to me. I have actually enjoyed challenging myself with three dimensional work and researching  wood joinery and new materials has actually been exciting. However, I do not think I will be working with wood in the future as I am not skilled enough to execute a professional wooden piece. I think I will be sticking to weaving.. I would not have known how difficult wood working is if it wasn't for the nature of Unit X. Something to bear in mind in the future!

I have really enjoyed group working during this unit and feel that my group have been blessed to be put together. I think the reason we have bonded sow ell is that we have chosen to be part of this group, rather than placed together by tutuors (which happened last year during unit x) and because we all had similar interests for the work, we have all been willing to put in the effort and actually try to work together as a group. Working with a mixed group of students from different areas of art and design has allowed me to engage in areas of practice that I am unfamiliar with, and this has challenged my own working practice. This is important to me as I feel that in the outside working environment you will be placed in a team that have come from all backgrounds, and keeping open minded about different working methods is something to bear in mind.

I have really enjoyed this unit, I would go as far as saying that this unit has been my most favourite since starting university last year.

I have thoroughly enjoyed having the opportunity to work with a group of students from all over the art school. It has been a great experience working with people who have a similar interest for the future as myself. 

My confidence in working with new materials, and in new collaborative ways has grown extensively throughout the unit as I have been able to tackle things that wouldn't normally come up in my regular units. 

Having the opportunity to work in a primary school has been amazing, as my ultimate goal is to become a primary school teacher I am so pleased that I had the chance to get some work experience first hand with a primary school class. This has secured my vision in pursuing a career in primary education as it has been so enjoyable working with the children. 

I have learnt that it is ok to make mistakes in your work as this has allowed me to take a step back and assess what went wrong, and how to prevent this from happening again in the future. 

Trip to B&Q

Today Joel and I took a trip to B&Q to buy the ply wood for our interactive playground final outcome.

As we had previously determined, we were looking for 9mm exterior ply wood (something I have recently learnt is wood that has been treated to be protected against weathering so it doesn't rot outside)

So our trip was very successful, as we were well prepared we knew exactly what we wanted to source from this shop.

We got there and found the wood we wanted, and lucky for us there is a system where you can get your wood cut for you which saves us so much time and laboring later on. So that's what we had done..

We found all of our other bits and bobs, (glue, brackets, screws etc) that we needed and had it ordered to be delivered at uni.

This process has given me much more confidence about outsourcing materials as I have little experience in doing so and as I have never worked with wood I have learnt a lot of little secrets that I wouldn't of found out if it weren't for this process!

I am pleased that I got the opportunity to work with a new material as it has been a challenge but the fact that I have been able to work out some issues and problem solve has really given me a boost in terms of tackling new and challenging materials and methods of working in the future.

School Visit

I was not part of this school visit as yesterday me and Joel were tackling the wood situation..

However here are some images taken from the school visit and the work that the children produced.

They were creating their own planets (keeping with the space theme) and then each table designed a space ship for them. Although I had a great day with Joel yesterday I do feel that I would have enjoyed this day too.

Plans for final piece

For the good of the group and to make the most of the time we have left of this unit, we have decided to split the group into two. We asked each other who wanted to get what out of the unit. Some said they were looking forward to working more with the children and getting some shadow work done with the teacher. I said that I was interested in working with new materials and getting an insight into working three dimensionally as I have never done this before. 

So today Joel and I met up in the studio. 

We had planned to source materials for our piece in the morning, but then realised we didn't have the specifics (dimensions, lengths etc) of the piece worked out so we spent a good amount of time discussing how we wanted the piece to look/function. This highlighted how little I know about working with wood. 

I had an idea in my head of how I wanted to build the piece but when I tried to articulate this to Joel, he immediately told me how my ideas couldn't work properly and this was great for me to find out as it made me realise that there was so much that I didn't know about wood work. 

I found out that we would need special exterior wood. 

It was also news to me that we would need to varnish the wood after painting so that it would be weather proof.. 

I also learnt that there were so so so so so many ways of joining wood and that it genuinely frazzled my brain trying to work out how to join one piece of wood to another.

In conclusion, I am not the natural when it comes to working with wood.. You win some, you lose some.

Here are some images of the sketches Joel and I were working from:

Today was really useful for me today as I got a great insight into working with a new material. It will definitely affect how I work in the future, as today we did a lot of research into different techniques that we might have to use. As I am familiar with my own ways of working, it was great to see how a three dimension student tackles the same task. 

This has definitely given me the confidence to be more open to using different materials.