Evaluation

Final Evaluation

When I was given the brief for this community project, I was hoping to be put into the group visiting the hospice as I wanted to take part in a community group that would result in a humbling experience. Looking back on how much my community group has done and the school that we worked with, I couldn't be happier. I've enjoyed working at Redgates so much and it's been such an amazing and humbling experience. When we found out that the previous organisation pulled out it was upsetting at first but I'm grateful for the group I got put in as well instantly started working on finding a new one in which we did and I'm so happy it was Redgates. I feel like throughout this project, I've learnt so much more than I would've if I was put in a different community group. I've learnt how to conduct a proposal, I've learnt how to work with children with different abilities and learning difficulties, I've learn more about sign language and cognitive age and I've also learnt how to plan and change around innovative ideas etc.

This project has been really humbling and I feel I've come a really long way from how I felt in the beginning. I was worried as at first since we didn't have an organisation to work with but once we got the ball rolling it became more enjoyable. I feel like it would've been even better if things were changed such as if we conducted two workshops instead of one just so that it would be easier to evaluate what works well and what doesn't. Also things such as having more opportunities to bond with the kids although they got used to us a lot easier. I also think that things would've been better if we bonded with the teachers and teaching assistants as I feel there was a lack of communication between us and them as on the workshop day, they seemed like they didn't know what we had planned to teach the children and as it got a bit messy, one of them weren't happy with the session due to the mess, so I do think things would've been a lot better if the communication between us as students and the teaching assistants was stronger. More time is another thing I feel was needed as they are learning disability, it was really hard to convey the message of drawing to the kids in just one session without breaking routine or schedules as they work at cognitive ages, so that alone was hard to communicate. Other than that, things went really well. I feel that going to observe classes before teaching a session was really helpful as we got to see how the kids work and what they can and can't do and this played a massive role when planning ideas and proposals as we had to take many things into consideration, and I feel observing classes beforehand was really beneficial.

Throughout this whole project, thankfully we haven't received bad feedback and I'm really happy with that as I feel all the preparation that me and Maisie carried out for Class 9 such as looking at research on cognitive ages and planning the workshops around that to suit the children and things such as trying out the activities before teaching the class to see what worked well and really benefitted us when it came to teaching the class. This is the feedback we received quoted from a previous blog post:

• One by one - she advised us that as the workshops can get really messy, which is great, she gave us the advice that if we wanted to keep things a bit more clean, we should get a student to take part one by one to keep things more controlled. I thought about doing this, but after observing the art class last time, the children get restless really easy and behavioural issues start to show and I wanted to avoid that, but I will still take this into consideration if there is a next time.
• Health and Safety - To take health and safety into consideration more, especially for my workshop as the paint was really slippery and the students did slip a lot but thankfully no injuries occurred. I will definitely look into health and safety a lot more as I only looked into what was safe for them and what wasn't in terms of materials and not surrounding. 
• Enthusiastic - She said I interacted with the children well and enforced the enthusiastic language with them well so like emphasising the tone of voice and really engaging well with them. This is something I took into consideration massively as after observing the classes earlier on in the year, I saw that they respond well when spoken to enthusiastically so I'm happy I was able to give off that good energy.

Receiving feedback like this made the experience even more worthwhile as the children thoroughly enjoyed the workshops and it makes me feel like I've done something or created a memory that will last forever with them and with me also.

Working with Redgate is a completely different experience than if I was to work with the Selhurst Children Centre for example. Although both organisations are working with children, there are so many different things to consider such as health and safety rules would be different slightly as both sets of children work at different abilities and communication would be completely different. Comparing the two makes me wonder what would my experience be like if I worked with a different community group and it just makes me value the experience even more.

My final thoughts on this whole project is that I'm extremely happy and proud of my group because although we were a group, we had to be split into small groups of two and a four as the children couldn't handle all of us in one classroom. A hiccup like that and the fact we found this school completely ourselves, enforces how hard we've worked. I also think that for working with people that aren't in our friendship groups, we all did really well and communication was good throughout the whole project. I feel like for all of us, Redgate School has left a really nice impression on us and hopefully we've left a really good impression on them. I'm so happy with the result of my workshop and surprised at how well it went as I only conducted one due to time. All in all, this experience has been amazing and I could not be happier with the result.

Outsider Art - Turning the Art World Inside Out

Looking back on this project, I can see it really closely links to the Outsider Art Documentary showed to us earlier in the community project. The term outsider art was created by the art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an english synonym for art brut, which was created by French Artist Jean Dubuffet. The word was used to describe art created 'outside the boundaries of official culture'. Dubuffet focused on art made by those on the outside of the established art scene such as children and patients of psychiatric hospitals. However, the english term 'outsider art' is often applied to include self taught or naive art makers who were never institutionalised, so those who have little to no contact with the mainstream art world.

I really enjoyed the documentary as it really opened my eyes to appreciating art a lot more. I do feel that the documentary was a little biased a i feel it was appreciating people who haven't attended art school a bit more but that's fine as it was showcasing the talents of those who haven't been institutionalised which is great. I really liked how they went to asylums and found people with disabilities or psychological problems and appreciated the art they created as they are shunned from the society and it was nice to seem them presented in a positive light.

I feel this closely links to my community group, Reigate School as they are children with learning disabilities and my aim was to break the boundaries of drawing by creating art in different ways still linking to drawing.  After the success of the workshop, some of the children really did produce some really nice work and I guess it would be viewed as outsider art as they are children that suffer from learning disabilities. I feel that it really did link closely and I'm happy i was given the chance to watch that documentary as I feel it prepared me for my community group.

Examples of Outsider Art

The Workshop!

15/07/2016

Today we conducted the workshop and surprisingly it went really really well. The students engaged and participated well, which made teaching the class a lot easier. Me and Maisie split the two activities between us and made the class swap groups so that everyone gets a chance to experience the both activities.

Maisie conducted the workshop 'Throwing Paint' which is when we filled up water balloons with poster paint which is non toxic and our aim was for the students to throw the balloons onto sheets of paper to create interesting shapes and patterns. I conducted the workshop 'Drawing with the body' which is using crayons and paint to draw and create marks using different parts of the body such as feet, elbows etc.

We arrived at 8:45 am to give ourselves are 45 mins preparation time as the students come in at around 9:30am. The school thankfully already had all of our materials set out for us so all we had to do was fill the water balloons and tape the paper into place. I helped Maisie fill up some water balloons before going to set up my activity. I then went to set up and used 4 coloured trays to fill up the yellow, red/orange, blue and green paint. I purposely placed the paint in a tray that's the opposite colour to help make things more exciting and to get the children to think a bit more. I placed around two sheets of huge paper down and set the trays in place whilst the students were doing their morning activity as it had passed 9:30 and the students started class whilst we were still setting up.

I finished setting up before Maisie as she was still outside setting up. Before splitting the class into two groups of four, I introduced myself and again and explained what we'd be doing this morning. I was nervous at first to present myself as I had to do it alone because Maisie wasn't quite ready yet, but the teachers helped out massively as they translated what I was saying into sign language, making it easier for the kids to understand.

The Workshop
After introducing myself, the teachers split the class into two for us to make things easier and I then took the students to the are where we would be creating the artwork. Due to time, as the students can only work for half an hour tops, I didn't demonstrate fully but simply got straight into it. I showed the kids what to do by doing it the same time as them. I dipped my feet into paint and made marks onto the large sheet. The students kind of followed my lead and caught on really quickly. I would personally say that the workshop was a success as one of the students whose really sensory and doesn't participate well, joined in and made himself feel really included and the teacher said she was really happy that he took part and engaged really well. The students produced some really nice work, I am still yet to receive photographs as for confidentiality purposes, the teachers had to take pictures as faces and names are not allowed to be shown/seen. The workshop got incredibly messy and I felt so bad but I did my best to clear up once the session was over. I cleared up when the teachers went to shower the kids. As for swapping over the two groups, both groups participated well and I feel the second group I taught, enjoyed it a lot more as they're sensory students. All in all, I'd say the workshop was a success and I couldn't be happier with the result.

Feedback
Most of the feedback I received was positive which I was really happy about. The art director gave us good feedback and also feedback that would benefit us in the future:

• One by one - she advised us that as the workshops can get really messy, which is great, she gave us the advice that if we wanted to keep things a bit more clean, we should get a student to take part one by one to keep things more controlled. I thought about doing this, but after observing the art class last time, the children get restless really easy and behavioural issues start to show and I wanted to avoid that, but I will still take this into consideration if there is a next time.
• Health and Safety - To take health and safety into consideration more, especially for my workshop as the paint was really slippery and the students did slip a lot but thankfully no injuries occurred. I will definitely look into health and safety a lot more as I only looked into what was safe for them and what wasn't in terms of materials and not surrounding. 
• Enthusiastic - She said I interacted with the children well and enforced the enthusiastic language with them well so like emphasising the tone of voice and really engaging well with them. This is something I took into consideration massively as after observing the classes earlier on in the year, I saw that they respond well when spoken to enthusiastically so I'm happy I was able to give off that good energy.

Here are the few pictures of some of the work produced as I'm still waiting for the rest of the pictures to be sent.

Final Ideas

12/07/2016

Today, Me and Maisie finalised ideas completely and posted them on the community, ready for them to be posted on the community. After the feedback from the art director, we cut down on ideas and came to two final ones that would be suitable for the more sensory students and higher ability students.

The two final ideas are:

• Drawing with the Body
• Throwing Paint

Quoted from proposal:

Drawing with the body -
Before seeing them, we would prepare water balloons that are filled with paint and bring them to the school. We would then lay paper on the ground in the garden space- which some students might enjoy to help us with- and then we give the balloons to the students and they throw them at the paper. The balloons would pop when they hit the paper and the paint will splash out making a mark (since it is filled with a liquid substance, the balloon will not make a loud noise, but if you are concerned we are happy to test out the volume of the pop). We then thought again that maybe we could edit the image a little afterwards and take some of the paint splatters and turn them into little people or animals etc.

Throwing Paint - 

Drawing with the body would consist with a variety of different activities, like dipping hands and feet in paint and then running over paper and making marks on it, or tapping pencils or crayons to their elbows or feet (or just anywhere really), and then the students making marks using body parts other than just their hands. They could also draw around some of their legs or arms, or maybe even the whole person to create negative silhouettes.

We also included the materials needed and since the school is quite equipped already we didn't have to include pricing.

Materials

As for materials, we will need paint and crayons and huge sheets of paper:

Paint

• 2 bottles of each colour
• Red
• Green
• Blue
• Yellow

Crayons

• Red
• Blue
• Yellow
• Green

We chose to use 2 bottles of each colour for the class as me and maisie are going to split the class into two groups, so a bottle for each colour in each group. The activities are going to get quite messy so hopefully the paint is enough, even if so, the school said they are more than happy to get more materials for us.

So this is the plan for our workshops with materials included. Our workshop is on Friday (15/07/2016) and we will be arriving at the school at 8:45am to give us enough time to prepare for the session.

The Proposal

08/07/2016

Today we went to Redgate in the morning to finally propose our ideas to the Art Director. We arrived around 9am to propose ideas. We then went to a separate room to give our ideas to her. The meeting didn't last very long, Class 4 presented their ideas first and in Class 4 is Josh, Alyssa, Anna and Dwayne. Me and Maisie (Class 9) presented next and we created another ideas sheet explaining our ideas more in depth. We gave a handout as we presented as last time from the school proposal, we saw this worked best. The Art Director seemed to really like our ideas and she said the ideas really suited the children. 

We received some feedback which discussed what was hard for the students to participate in and what was more suitable for them. These are the notes I took down for feedback:

• Favourite things activity is a bit hard.
• Sensory - hand over hand - they have sensory boxes for activities that may be a bit more sensory and suited to those children.
• Stencils - for higher ability / lower ability suited for mark making activity.
• Body Awareness is a really important thing this term so drawing with the body is a really good activity to in-cooperate with that theme.
• Email her by Wednesday with finalised Ideas

 With this feedback, Me and Maisie decided that we will go back to school and on the Tuesday lesson, finalise ideas and materials so that it's ready to be emailed to the art director by Wednesday 13th. These are the next steps for us. 

I also prepared a powerpoint the night before but unfortunately didn't get the chance to bring it up on the projector since it wasn't set up but this is what it looked like:

   

  

  

  

 

Ideas and Arts Council Proposals

30/06/2016

Today me and Maisie looked at ideas that we had come up with on the 17/06/2016 and added descriptions to them to help break down the ideas clearer so that when we propose them, our ideas will be clear.

We started off by brainstorming ideas and we came up with a mind map full of ideas.



Our ideas were:

• Drawing their favourite things - have them make marks on a piece of paper about how their favourite things make them feel - then we can draw over their marks a simple line drawing of what the thing actually was.
• Modelling - pressing things into clay and painting or creating sculpture like favourite animals etc. 
• Crayon Resist - draw in white crayons and then paint over.
• Throwing Paint - throw paint at a large plain paper then we draw into the shapes made to make it into something else.
• Rubbings - newsprint and crayons on textures.
• Drawing with the body - feet in paint and using body to create marks.
• Big Stencils - all get together and fill in the stencil with everything they can - paint, pom poms, tissue paper, collage, crayons etc.
• Collage - pre-cut images, then they stick them down however they please to create an image.
• Dot-to-dot - making dot-to-dots more interesting.

These were the first drafts of ideas that we first came up with. A lot of them fit well with the students such as the paint activities and rubbings as a lot of the students are sensory so exploring with different textures and materials will be good for them.

The next step is to propose these ideas to Carmen, the art director at Redgate School.

Preparation for the Real Proposal 
Even though we had the prep proposal in front of our teachers for extra help, we also looked at Art Councils and how to conduct and what's included in an art proposal. Our tutors showed us personal proposals that they have done which helped out a lot. Here is the information I gathered:

Arts Council England - organisations that are funded by the government:

• Welcome Trust
• Jerwood Charitable 
• Princes Trust
• Lottery Trust
• The Elephant Trust
• Leverhulme Trust
• ArtsQuest
• Welcome Europe
• Local Councils
• Art Wales
• Paul Hamlin Foundation
• The Tate
• Art and Humanities Research Councils

What is included in an Art Proposal:

• Previous Experience
• What your plan is (the logistics)
• The impact and what will it be?
• Audience, who you'll work with
• Be professional
• Insurance for Arts Practise
• Costs
• What problems may occur (Risk Assessment)
• Title of proposed project and define
• Time Scales
• Materials
• Roles, Team Members
• Past Examples of Work
• Closing Statements

Proposal Lesson

28/06/2016

On Tuseday, my group conducted a propasal in front of our teachers that included all of our ideas as a group (individual classes) and included pricing and costs for the activities. 

The proposal did last quite long, I think it lasted for half an hour which is really long and that was one the criticisms we received. I think the reason for why it was so long is because we're split into classrooms and each class has students with different levels of abilities and it's a lot of information to come back and discuss with everyone else.

Me and Maisie both made our own slides for Class 9 as our class works differently to the others. The information on our slides included possible activities that we were thinking of carrying out, the materials and general information about our class and risk assessments. The overall feedback for our proposal was generally good feedback. They commented that they were impressed that we provided a handout (physical copy) for them to look through and how we spoke really clearly and the presentation was presented well.

Although the feedback was generally positive, we did receive some feedback on things we had to work on for the future professional proposal. We got given the feedback that we should've broken down our presentation more as we included a huge amount of information as each class works at different abilities. We noted this and in the future, we'll definitely take this into consideration. We also got given the feedback that we should've made the presentation more visually pleasing as the powerpoint was quite standard and we didn't include images as we aren't allowed to photograph the children for various reasons.

Other than that, majority of the proposal went really well and all in all, we received more positive feedback than negative which was nice. Down below are the screenshots of me and Maisie's class proposal and the closing statement in which I wrote to conclude the presentation.