Over view of planning the DACA workshop..

Group work isn’t something I’m used to, as when I’m working within weave, the work is all self initiated, we each complete a whole project ourselves, with no group work attached. Overall it has been quite a big challenge working within a large group for Unit X, having to get used to relying on others as well as myself has been extremely difficult, it has always seemed that something has cropped up, myself included at times. Getting everyone together at one time to meet as a whole group has been almost impossible until this last week before we do the workshop, therefore most of the talks have been missing at least one person. I do feel I played a big part in arranging the meetings to try and get everyone together, so this would allow us to form a plan of the day, as nothing really ever went to plan, it’s a relief now at this point as a group we finally managed to organise a brilliant workshop for the day.
Initially we were considering focusing the workshop on the Holi Festival, an ancient Indian/Hindu tradition that involves throwing brightly coloured paint at one another in a massive celebration throughout the county. Relating to this, we decided to have a powder paint fight at the end of the day, to recreate this idea of the Holi Festival for all the children, we thought it would be a nice idea for them to have an insight on other countries important cultures.
But when speaking to Claire about disaster management, we realised that we hadn't considered what would happen if the weather was terrible on that day. If it was raining for example, this would mean that we would have to complete the whole workshop inside. We had thought of covering the whole classroom with dustsheets but came to the agreement that the task probably just wouldn’t work as well and could be a major health and safety matter. This, along with the idea that students from the Hindu/Indian backgrounds may feel patronised that we are focusing a workshop around something that they know more about than we do, this could cause us more problems than what it would be worth, from this we decided to change our activities for the day slightly, and focus the workshop more on the general aspects of colour, with the hope that the weather is nice on the day to re create the Holi Festival, to cover the health and safety side of the matter we wrote a letter to be sent out to all of the parents of the children taking part in the day, to let them know what exactly would be going on during the day, so if there were any allergies we needed to no about or general causes for concern we would know prior to the lesson, we would also be supplying overalls, eye protection googles, hair/shoe protectors and face masks for all the children to wear so every caution is being thought about. Along with everything going on for this day, a risk assesment has been done to cover all areas.

We always had a rather clear idea of the activities we wanted to focuses on throughout the day, however we still need to revise it carefully to ensure we have covered every area that may encounter a disaster in lots of different ways.
Our final plan is to aim to focus our day on colour, as this is a very broad area to focus on, and we could really do a lot with it as well as the children getting a lot out of it we therefore will be able to come up with an extensive range of activities to complete throughout the day.

We are planning on looking at lots of different aspects of colour including the semotics of colour which will lead onto emotions within colour, we want them to do lots of experimenting with colour, involving a range of artist research that they can refer back too along with mark making and development work throughout the day, with a wide range of activities that we as a group have planned, all aspects of colour will be touched upon so that the children get a lot out of the day.
As well as ensuring that the children learnt something during our workshop, we also wanted to inject a clear element of fun, making it a day that they will remember for a very long time, this is why we left the final aspect of colour with in cultures till the very end of the day, when they will see what fun can really be within an art subject.  

At the end of the day we are aiming to gather feedback from the students, for an interest as to what they all thought of the day, but in a more exciting form than a paper questionnaire. Claire gave us many ideas for this, however we have decided to wear plain white t-shirts, and get the children to write their feedback on our shirts. I think this will be a fun activity to end the day on, and will hopefully be a successful way to gather feedback from all the students efficiently, it will also be a way that both the children and ourselves have never given or received feedback before.

 

                                                               Spain's Tomato Festival..

                                                           Manchester's Colour Run..

                                                                 Indian holi festival..

The picture below is of our final lesson plan for our workshop in Daca, on this lesson plan it has everything we need to know including time sceduale, topic infor, activity, resources, and the presenter, helpers needed for a particular part of the day.

DACA Dry Run.. 07/05/15

The first part of today we split ourselves up into our two different workshop groups, my group first of all had to be the challenging audience for the other group whilst they did a complete practice run through of there DACA workshop, when I say challenging as the other group and tutors we had to face them with small and miner incidents that they could face when doing this workshop for real, this was interesting to see how not only they adapted to the challenges but how my group adapted in such different ways, the conclusion as to why I thought this was because we are going to be having a year 7 class and the other group will be having a year 9 class, we had to participate for the other group where ever is was necessary just as the other group would have to do for us, apart from having to play a huge part of reviewing there work, it was vital that as a group we were taking notes to give back the relevant feedback at the end of the session. 
I thoroughly enjoyed the other groups project, with some very high quality points as well as some room for improvement, it was highly disappointing that our group's dry run couldn't have gone much worse. 
With a small lack of communication and a misunderstanding of what the requirements were for today, as a group we were all highly unprepared as to what we needed to do and what we needed to bring, I quickly picked up on the other group having bought lots of resources for there audience including a power point presentation, music and handouts, three important things they will be needing on the day, this allowed us to see a good insight as to what there delivery will be all about, my group had nothing of the sort and unfortunately due to no ones fault but our own had to quickly come up with what we would do twenty minutes prior to our run through, this definitely didn't go to plan.
After both our groups had completed our run through it was important a big group discussion of feedback was had. 
* My reflection of somebody that was the deliverer. 
To describe my own role I would say tragic, a complete disaster, an awkwardly embarrassing situation to be in, being unorganized was clearly shown to everyone. 

*My experience as the receiver of the other groups delivery.  
The other group did very well, and the complete opposite to my own, I was very pleased for them, and it gave me the personal encouragement as well as worry as I know how much work I exactly had to do. 

*My two pieces of critical advice for the other group was; 1) The whole day needs to be properly sorted into a time tabled order and 2) It would be nice for the whole group to get involved a bit more, as I recognized that the same few people were talking.  

My Group's personal feedback from Anna and Clare.

* We were all too quiet when speaking. 
* We need to be more responsible for what jobs need to be done. 
* As a group we need to support each other more. (i.e. When someone is delivering/speaking, we all need to listen.  
* Bad timing of the day. 
* The plan of the day isn't working, including the activities, too much of the same thing going on. 
* Our learning outcomes aren't clear enough or making sense, the children need to know exactly what these are to understand the day, and what they will be doing, its important this is clear to us also. 
* The workshop needs to be open to interpretation, we need to let them decide things, let the classroom be open to opinions, 
* When asking any questions, always ask why and get the pupils to expand on there answers.

After being a part of today and hitting our first main obsticle it was clear to all of us that a lot of work still needed to be done for us to go ahead with our workshop, tonight we all stayed till very late to turn our work around, with the chance of still trying to let our workshop go ahead, thankfully we turned it around and created a brand new workshop with some amazing new ideas that would link our learning outcomes together a lot better, both Clare and Anna were very pleased with us, and were all delighted that our workshop will be going ahead again next tuesday.

Key Blog Post two.. 07/05/15

Reflect upon the key developments - was it within a skill, process, or developing a new approach? Identify and discuss, including appropriate images if relevant.

The most important part of anything in life is the process and development of the journey from start to end and planning is always one of the most valuable assets. This in particular applies within a work project. During this educator unit not only my personal development but also our development as a group has been very important and has had to apply to everything. We have used skills that we probably haven’t even realised we are using; communication skills, listening skills, organising skills, leadership work, group work, time management and deadlines and dealing with money. The process we have taken to get to this point is vital, and working as a group has been very important with allocating jobs so that all the work is completed for the workshops we have to present. Collaborating and working in a group has been difficult at times; working together hasn’t always gone as smoothly as we had each hoped; pulling together in the same direction has always been needed and a key example of this is the amount of times we got together as a group or tried to get together so we would get the workshop planned and sorted. This didn't happen and some sort of problem always seemed to arise. It wasn’t until the last week before the DACA workshop when our dry run failed we all got together and each worked as hard as we could to turn the negativity around. We worked hard together so that we would be able to still go ahead with the day. If I was to have the chance of being a part of something like this again then I would suggest having smaller groups so that the communication was clearer so that it was easier to get things done quicker. We have spent a lot of time on developing new approaches as part of this unit in many ways. One of the most important ways is how we have tackled situations when problems have occurred; choosing the right kind of work space to have our meetings has been important - we were always heading to the library to a more social space to try and get things done but not a lot was ever happening. When we moved to the Art School and were in a room on our own with no window distractions etc.. a lot more work was done. Working under pressure was a better thing for me and my group because as time was running out we came together to collaborate more so that everything actually got done. 

Reflect upon the impact of collaboration on your methods - what aspects interest you? Why? How do you intend to further develop these? Identify further research necessary to fulfil this.

 I found it very interesting how depending on what background you were from it made a massive impact on what kind of workshop you wanted to deliver. Having a textile background I felt passionate after going into the school and recognising that there wasn’t a lot of textiles being taught, that I wanted to make a change. My initial thought for the workshop was to deliver a textile extravaganza, something with a lot of texture, but recognising that the same pattern was occurring, the peers in my group who were studying fine art wanted to something more media based. Interactive art is something with a bit of everything. An example of this, the student who was studying this degree was certain she wanted to use powder paint, as she had used it a lot previously and knew it was something that was fun and could go down very well with the Year 7 pupils. Add some graphics and technology and you
have a modern formula. The first ideas were a video showing an in depth delivery of the day alongside a range of vibrant photographs. As a group we decided to further develop these ideas by combining them all together for our final workshop and first of all we had to plan the day step by step and we did so by allocating everyone a job to do. The day will go ahead as follows. There will be starter activities, along with games to get the children involved. There will be mark making tasks on a wide range of paper using a variety of different sorts of media to get the fine art specialism across. Following on there will be a section on art direction and graphic work using a choice of different materials and media; a large power paint fight inspired by nationality and world culture; and to then finish off the day, there will be a huge collage put together using all the things that had been made during the day, with material and embellishments. In order to get feedback from the children, we will all be wearing the same white t-shirt for them to write all over us and tell us exactly what they thought, a different and fun way of getting feedback to finalise the day. We’ll then pull that together into one big feedback document. To do this we must complete a risk assessment, a clear time table of the day, a thorough lesson plan including a version of ideas we could undertake in case anything at all goes wrong and a budget plan of a list of everything we need to buy for the day to calculate all expenses and a power point so we can deliver our workshop professionally. 

Were there unexpected developments? What surprises arose?

Not only me personally but I know as a whole group we all thought we would be able to sail through this unit without a knock to our sails. A quote to back me up on this is; ‘A smooth sea never made a skilful sailor.’ Without hard work being put into the preparation for this project, there is a strong chance that the project would fail. We have proved to ourselves that the time we spent together was not nearly enough.
I initially thought this unit was going to be a rather easy one compared to the other projects going on within unit X, we as a group couldn’t have been any more wrong. I don’t feel I mentally prepared myself for how hard this is and how much work needed to be done as well as one of the most challenging tasks of working in a group. I thought that working in a group would be easy, I still havn’t got to grips with how people’s opinions vary so much. This was a definite surprise that I personally felt arose. I was not prepared for how difficult this could be and the impacts that it would have on everyone.

What are the creative responses that you have done and intend to develop in your project and practice? Consider why this is - what are the key aspects of interest? How does it relate to the broader area of your practice? Does it develop your understanding and appreciation of context for your work? How?

The most creative response we had as a group towards our workshop was going to be a mark-making task using different tools. The tools that we would be using would be recycled materials, our own human limbs and objects that would get the children really thinking. By using tools that they haven’t used before it would allow us to have a tight budget and get everyone’s imagination into full use. The creative the tools could be anything. This was something we knew the children in Year 7 would really appreciate as they currently only use old battered brushes that have been used for a number of previous years. 
This first small and simple task would excite them and encourage them to do some really experimental pieces of work. The children will be given a number of different sized sheets of paper to produce their work on. This is something that I also know they don’t have the chance to do currently, and is something I hope that they will use wisely.
Music more often than not is an influential part of peoples lives, the right sort of music brings in lots of feel-good vibes and the encouragement to want to get up and be involved with whatever is going on, music draws you in and gives you high bursts of energy.
This is exactly what we want to achieve for our workshop, bringing in music to our mark making task will get the energy high, the atmosphere buzzing and make it all a lot more fun. The key aspects of interest for my creative response are development work, not only personally but as a group and the evolvement with the school. I find it interesting how the school really only follows the same regime year after year, they stick to the same tools and the same media, as I’ve mentioned before, with textiles being something they don’t focus very much, and I still don’t fully understand why.

I don’t feel that the children are developing their skills, they are not using their full potential to be creative individuals as they are all doing the same thing and following the same trend. For our workshop, as my own personal involvement and approach to what we have decided to do, I would like to see them do as many different tasks as possible and ones they can really express each of their personalities. This has related to my practice in many different ways, when I first found myself in my year at foundation I really learnt how to make marks, I learnt that were was no right or wrong in art and design simply to be as creative as possible. Nothing needs to have a meaning and nothing necessarily needs to have a purpose, mark making speaks for its self as well as having a mind of its own. Both first and second year have been a part of my development too, they have given me the chance to experiment with modern equipment that I otherwise would never have had the opportunity to use. As a very basic starting point this is exactly what I want to give to the children me and my group will be doing this as a very basic starting point.

Identify and discuss any additional research now needed to support and underpin your learning, your appreciation of your practice and development of your ideas. 

To clearly identify our additional research and to unpick what is most important for our learning, a plan of what exactly needs to be done is the first part of research development to be completed. This includes allocating jobs to each individual so that everyone has a specific job role to carry out. To split up every section of the day some background research will need to be carried out so the right kind of information is being out across. One of the most important is artist research and culture research are they both play a huge role in the workshop for the day. The artist research will include artists/ designers that use tools and recycled materials within their own practice to create work. These artists will include Jackson Pollock and Ian Davenport. Research into artists, that use mark making tools, will underpin and unpick the key learning aspects as it’s a clear link of inspiration, they have something to look at and something to follow. The work of both artists as well as our own knowledge will guide the children into the right direction of top experimentation work. Both planning and research work is something I very much appreciate in my own practice as they both help me tremendously, and this will hopefully have the same effect on the children.

Identify a plan of action that is now required in order for you to complete the e.g. time management, exploring new technology, furthering your contextual research and knowledge?

Our final requirement that we need to complete before our workshop next week are as follows; meeting up as a whole group has been a huge problem within this unit and over the next week this is key, without everyone’s involvement it will be almost impossible to make any final decisions and if we do it, we won’t have our full groups involvement. This will be something we will have to work with when it comes down to it. We need to give jobs out to each other allowing us to complete everything necessary. Time management must be spot on, making sure that we have enough activities to fill the day, as well as making sure we don’t have too much. I will explore new technology. I will further my contextual research and knowledge by bringing activities in to link the learning aims and objectives to the work that they complete. The artist research will be a big part of this too.

 

My Micro teaching day.. 30/04/15

The first part of my three workshops was my very own micro teaching brief, an adapted version of the same kind of thing that Anna taught us all last week, for this task I had to plan my own workshop as a practice of planning and teaching to present in just ten minutes in front of my tutors and a group of fellow peers. I started of by having a think about what I could do for the task, I came to the conclusion that I thought it would be a great idea if I based it around a skill that I had learnt here in University, my specialism now being in weave, I thought this might be a little too constructive to try and present in just ten minutes, as time is one of the most important skills to tackle, so I decided to go all the way back to first year where my main focus was on embroidery and teach my small class a hand embroidery technique that I knew the majority hadn't learnt before. I focused on a simple running stitch (small or large stitching that follows on straight after each other, usually in a straight line.) and finished with a much harder technique called French knots (small knots that lie on the surface of your fabric) I found some pattern flower printed fabric to take to the lesson for them to do there stitching on, this allowed each of them to have a small embroidered sample to take home with them.  I also produced a plastic wallet for each of them full of useful information; I put together a lesson plan including the lesson objectives, aims and time scale of the lesson, with a step by step guide so each student knew exactly what was going on. I produced work sheets each with a step by step guide on how to thread a needle, how to tie your threaded up needle, how to do the running stitch and how to do a French knot, I did all of this so each student could carry on with  there sample in there own time, if that is what they wish, they could also develop there sample on even more as I gave them a number of options with what they could do with the sample after it was completed, including framing, scaling bigger or smaller, printing or photocopying (bringing in different media for the sample) this really encouraged my students to carry on, as at the end of my ten minutes I got some really brilliant feedback from them all.

I was very pleased with how my mini workshop went, In one word I would describe it as very ‘successful’ as I had learnt a lot of valuable aspects from the afternoon. One of my only down sides was I struggled a little bit with time,  even though everyone was very close to having had a go at both techniques, no one completed all the aims, this was my own fault as I then saw I had made it a little too complicated for the time scale that we got given, this made me realise how important time actually is, and  that  a lot of thought process needs to go into how much I can actually start and complete within a time period that I have, this applies to many other things in life. If I was to do my micro teaching brief again, I would only do one technique, and that would be the running stitch, my reason for this is because it’s the easiest one to pick up for beginners and can easily be adapted and built upon depending on the time we have, each student really could have tackled this skill without me even thinking of moving on to learning another one. 

The picture above is a small sample of my own that I tought  how to re create to my fellow peers, it includes two hand embroidery techniques, The runner stitch and french knots.
 

The below two pictures are the handouts that I created for my microteaching brief to give to my fellow peers are tutors, I made sure I had enough for everyone as well as spare copys just in case.

 

The two pictures above are two mark making slacks with acrylic paint, water based paint and emulation, this was a micro teaching brief taught by one of my friends, one of the briefs that stood out the most for me, as it was a completely new skill I had never seen before, but besides just that, I absolutely loved the outcome of the process.



My Micro teaching session planning.. 28/04/15

* I need to start of by introducing myself
* Can do soemthing screen based if I need too, eg. create a poerpoint presentation and present it on the day of the session.
* If I decide that I want to make something for my microteaching brief I need to make sure I bring everything in that I need for my fellow peers to use.
* Whilst doing my micro teaching I need to concider the people speaking, the people listening and the people doing.

Anna's Microteaching Brief.. 23/04/15

* The secret to success is to keep our own micro teaching simple and very brief.
* To not complicate anything.
* Dont take something massive that will obviously take a long time to do and try and fit it into a smaller timescale, it wont work.
* We each need to think about all aspects of everything.
(the idea behind this is if we were to have someone who was in a wheel chair or disabled of any kind, we would need to make sure we can adapt to there needs, whether that means to change something slightly about the workshop or just make it a disabled friendly workshop from the very beginning.)
* Must be very constructive

Anna's Microteaching Brief..
We had to listen, work in pairs as well as working in a big group for this activity. 
The picture below is from the micro teaching brief by Anna, this was all about Anna's job in 'Art direction' In pairs we got given four pieces of coloured card, red, green, yellow and blue, as well as a piece of fruit, the task was to place the piece of fruit onto which ever piece of card we personally think the fruit fitted best on, me and my partner deciding on a green piece of card, the reason for this was because green is an organic, healthy and natural colour, just the same as what a piece of fruit is, the apple in my opinion didn't look right on any other colour.   

The picture below is of a small micro teaching brief task, we had to do in our pairs, as a practice run of what we would be doing next week. I made a jewellary collection out of play dou, along with this came a written out lesson plan, the lesson plan times had to be very pacific as to how long it would take to show and complete this task wen doing it with your partner, a feedback form had to be filled out on both sides when doing this micro teaching brief. 

Workshop.. 21/04/15

What could I add to education?
does there need to be more direction?
more independance?
what is the limit the children can deal with?

whats good about education and why?
what could be changed and why?
If I was a part of the government, what would I do and why?

In particular in Darwen in the near future there will be another two acadamys as well as DACA that is currently standing. As sad as it is Darwen is in economic depravasion, and is unfortunatly a town that is going no where, they have a very low percentage of pupils that go onto higher education, and end up just staying in the town.
Because they are a town in economic depravasion, it is more than likely that they dont have much money as a town, this will effect peoples behaviour and could really higher the chances of crime, such as theft/burglery and arson.
The accadamy has been such a positive aspect for the town as its bought in nothing but good results and outcomes, one of the best factors that I picked up on from being at the school is the idea of having the Pods that are based in the school to encourage students to set up there own business, a brilliant potential for the town and the up coming genertaions, a chance to change the town into something with a lot more success.

'Fake it till I make it..'
Stand tall like wonder women, back straight and hands on my hips, this will allow me to not only feel but act in control and feel more confident.
share the silence..
* get the children up and being pyhsical and involved in the classroom

* brilliant/insperational video clip explaining all about our body language and how it effects everything that we do..
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are

WHY SHOULD YOU STUDY ART AND DESIGN AS ONE OF YOUR SUBJECTS?
* ITS A SUBJECT THAT NEVER ENDS
* YOU CAN CARRY IT ON INTO ANY SORT OF CAREER
* ITS A SHAME THAT WE HAVE TO JUSTIFY OUR EXISTANCE ALL THE TIME..
* CREATIVE AND BEING ARTISTIC IS PROVEN TO BE AN ANTI DEPRESENT
* WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO CREATE AND ENCOURAGE THE SUBJECT
* WE ARE THE NEXT GENERATION FOR THE SUBJECT/JOBS

'IF YOU DO A JOB YOU LOVE, YOU WILL NEVER HAVE TO WORK A DAY IN YOUR LIFE..'

Jane Mcfadden
we had a talk with Jane Mcfadden the unit leader of unitX..
she told us that it was key to have the same amount of fun as the children are when we are doing our workshop.
when they are being creative its always a good idea to be able to make something pysical so that the children can take something home with them.