Taunton Journeys

Exhibition at County Hall - Taunton

2010-09-13T19:12:00.005+01:00

Today I installed some of the work created during the summer art camp at County Hall in Taunton, Block A. Do go along and have a look at the work on show there. It will be there until October 8th 2010. After this the work will go back to the school and go on show there.

Exhibition of Work

2010-08-31T15:41:00.002+01:00

We will be putting together an exhibition of the pupils work at Taunton County Hall showing from 13th September to 8th October, come along and have a look...

Last Day, finishing off the work and our exhibition

2010-08-14T11:01:00.007+01:00

We spent the morning of our final day yesterday finishing off all the work that we had been making throughout the week, Some of us had to finish our 'ideal school' ideas, others imaginative transport, others our journals. Still lots to do...

Then it was time to set up the exhibition ready for all the visitors coming in the afternoon.

We had senior staff from school, friends and family, along with all the pupils that had taken part in the project.

We also wanted to do an activity with some of the visitors based around the things we had explored this week, so we set up some paper and did continuous line drawings of the journeys that people had made here. The pupils asked the visitors to describe notable things in their journey while the young people drew them.

The visitors were shown around by the pupils, given a tour and the work explained to them.

Some more examples of the work on show

Journey journals...

Mapping our journeys...

Next a selection of the artwork will go on show at County Hall in September, it will then come back to school and hopefully go on show here before going back to the pupils who should be fairly settled by then.

Well done everyone who took part, you should be proud of all the wonderful work you have made, Julie

Day Four - Finishing our models and designing our school

2010-08-12T20:52:00.007+01:00

The day began with finishing off our sculptures from yesterday, most of us only had to paint them and finalise a few bits, we also wrote a little about our creations to display alongside our artwork to explain it.

Next we thought about todays challenge, to re-design the school, we began with a tour around to see some areas we could tackle and came up with suggestions as we walked and ideas for once we formed groups.
We then concentrated on these areas and came up with ideas of what they should encompass, look like and contain in an ideal, but realistic world.

Then it was time to draw, paint and collage our ideas, each group approached this in completely different way, from sketches to full paintings, to annotated drawings.

We will still need a bit of time to finish these off, the plan for tomorrow as well as completing some of the other bits that need a few tweaks. Then we will need to prepare for the exhibition, check back then...

Day Three - How would you travel to school?

2010-08-11T17:42:00.006+01:00

We began the day by thinking about if we could travel to school any way we liked how would we get there and what would happen along the way. We came up with water slides, mobile discos with a dragon DJ, a tree catapult with hover bike amongst others. Today we worked in pairs with people in the group that had not interacted that much as yet, this way we got to know more people and made more friends. In our pairs we discussed our ideas and came to a joint decision on what our idea should encompass, then we created designs for these and thought about how these could be made.

After this we started to construct the basic structure from bits of junk, foam, card, plastic, tubes etc sticking them together, later we would cover them in modroc so the structure would be hidden.

Some of us had used modroc before others had not so everyone learnt how to use it and were a bit shocked by how warm it was to start and how cold it went after it was wetted.

We carefully covered our structures, hiding the bits underneath.

Some bits were very detailed like this hover bike, other worked much larger scale.

Bryony came in to film us at work, but stopped to help out a bit as well.

Most of us are now ready to paint and finish off these which we will do in the morning before moving on to the next activity.

Day Two - Exploring our journeys through print

2010-08-10T17:59:00.008+01:00

We began the day by revisiting our journey journals, recording some bits about our journey this morning and home last night. The biggest difference for most people was that it was raining today and was bright sunshine yesterday. We added a few pages and then moved on to todays project.

Shame it was raining as we wanted to go outside and do some rubbings of different textures that we may encounter on our journeys, such as bricks, tarmac, grids etc, despite this we headed for the undercover areas and tried our best, everyone managed a fair few. These were to form the basis of our first print blocks.

We were going to make two print blocks today, one collograph (junk textures), the other using press print with the idea being that later in the day we will overprint these building up layers.

We started to make the junk print block first so it had a chance to dry.

When it came to the press print we started with a trial print so everyone could see how it works, this could be any design.

Then came printing our blocks, there were some really great well thought out designs based on the rubbings we had just made

Some of the many prints we made today

First Day - exploring our journeys

2010-08-09T17:11:00.006+01:00

The group all met for the first time today, we spent quite a bit of time getting to know each other with a few games. We then did some interviews in pairs to try and get to know another person a bit better. We talked about our journeys to school and what we enjoy about them, and what we don't like so much, we also thought a bit about what we saw on our journeys.

After that we began a 'journey journal', a sketchbook of ideas to help us throughout the week with the other activities we are going to do, this is something we are going to revisit throughout the week and hopefully think a bit about at home.

We also spent some time documenting each others journeys, describing to a partner what we saw, heard and felt on the way.

Taunton Academy Art summer camp

2010-07-28T13:28:00.000+01:00

From Monday 9th to Friday 13th August a small group of students are coming together to think about their journeys to and from school as well as their impressions of school itself.

These pupils will be made up of a few students already attending the school and pupils who will be attending the new school in September. The idea is to introduce them to their new surroundings and get to know some people already there, as well as thinking about their own potential impact in the school. Of course all of this will happen through creative techniques will be drawing, painting, printing, model making and making our own sketchbooks.

The project will be led by professional artist Julie Roberts (www.julieroberts.co.uk) and assisted by Alice Jones (www.alice-jones.co.uk) recent graduate. This is all co-ordinated by Somerset Art Works and funded by the 'give it a go' programme via Somerset County Council.

Check back here for any progress.