At the Teachers Art Forum session yesterday we went through how to search for and recognise a 'good' artist to work with. We met Dave Brenannd who told us about of the wonderful spaces and resources they have to offer at the City Learning Centre.

We even tried out one of Grundy' 'projects in class' ideas.

Creating a photographic class poem inspired by the Neon works of Contemporary Artist Peter Liversidge

Peter would making his art by sitting at his kitchen table and writing a proposal. A proposal is an artist statement, describing what he/she plans to do and this is sent to the commissioning body which could be a council, an arts organisation or other.

Peter makes these proposals the first part of his art, often framing them and exhibiting them. The proposals purpose is to sketch out an idea before it is realised, allowing everyone to interpret in their own way.
The ideas become the artwork, like a drawing pre-empting the physical realisation of the idea.

What to do in class:
Using a broad topic like; hope, loss, time, space.

Ask each child to write a poem about one of these subjects.

Ask everyone to read out their poems whilst projecting them onto the whiteboard, so that everyone can read along with them.

Ask the class to say what they think of each poem. What part in particular they liked the most.

For example:

Time, time, time
Make time, give time, take time out
Win time, lose time, the time of your life
Spend time, sell time, the good times and the bad


Ask the class to pick a single part of the poem like; ‘give time’
Use this phrase and create it using glow sticks. Photograph in a really darkened room. Do this for everyone and put the images together into a stop frame animation. Give each phrase time to be digested, maybe 10seconds each. You can even add sound. A poem created as a class.
Here is one we tried earlier...... called 'endless'.