Today is World Creativity and Innovation Day. Being a proudly creative environment, I asked a Year 9 form to send an image of something where they have used creativity. #worldcreativityandinnovationday

One of the art teachers is a collector of old discarded books and magazines, and the development of the zine came from finding a way to use all the wonderful adverts in the donated Oxfam books. This, with a cohort of art students that were excellent creative writers too, saw the beginning of the sixth form zine. 

The students involved in making their zine, use their drawings and paintings from their current project, mostly on paper and then digitise it. The layering and presentation of visual imagery is all completed digitally. Then the process in repeated for further issues, using the format again and again. The cutting and layering of imagery is an important part of the process. They are developing more sophisticated collaging and layering with their secondary resources. Images from photocopies of books cut and drawn into, old manuscripts and sheet music to draw into and magazine images to cut out are used with the text that has been created by the students. Our sixth form students create the artwork, and all of the content, including the poetry, writing and collected material collages. 

The zine will be available for sixth form soon…. #worldcreativityandinnovationday

The department has been working with Goldsmiths, specifically their curating department to develop a new project around inclusivity and diversity. We have worked with students as  socially engaged curators on the BA in Curating at Goldsmiths.

There are students who want to work as curators in galleries and those who want to make films, art works or events in and for particular communities. What they share is a keen interest in social and political urgencies and in making projects to address them. The lengths they have gone to to understand what a curator in this widened sense might be, or what a socially engaged art practice might look like, when they’ve often not had access to arts programmes, are really extra-ordinary. But, when we speak to them they feel hesitant or not entitled to study curating, which they imagine to be for ‘other’ kinds of people.  

In conversations we noted that schools shy away from teaching socially engaged practice or develop their students’ understanding of curating and what that can mean. We felt that in looking at diversity in the curriculum it was important to recognise that many young people that we teach are not necessarily from ‘art connected’ backgrounds, we are interested in thinking about how arts education addresses social issues and consider how students from a wide variety of backgrounds are encouraged and supported on their creative journey

Students in Year nine have been working on the pilot of the curating project and here are some of the works and research that our students have been making.

As part of the pilot unit, students had a virtual workshop from BA Curating students in conjunction with the CCA Goldsmiths Gallery. Their new exhibition of works by MOHAMED BOUROUISSA linked with the socially engaged art that students were looking at, some of the work was made as part of the exhibition workshop.

It’s good to see students being able to make their ceramic designs…

I saw these on the stairs…. brilliant creations.

Since returning on site, the students have made the most of the three weeks to make the larger scale work, that they have been planning… They are painting, printing with the presses.. It is a joy to see all the work in progress.

Yesterday was a day for photographing coursework, as the current amazing Y11’s are continuing to make their portfolios, I am constantly impressed by their dedication and positivity.

Year 8 have been drawing to explore mark-making and pattern from things in their homes. Using only pen, students have been looking at the details in every day objects, seeing them in a new light…