documenting everything I get up to and all that influences me during my unit x educator project whilst reflecting on how this process has changed and developed my future objectives.
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Unit X Educator Final Reflective Blog Post.
This unit has been so different to any other I have done so far at university and for this reason i would go as far to say it has been the most interesting one yet. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know all the students on unit x educator and the fact we all come from different creative studies has made it all the more interesting as I have learned from them and how they work as I would like to think they have from myself. I don't think any other unit could have offered me such a diverse group of people to collaborate with - making the experience truly the most interesting and educational one yet at university for myself.
My favourite workshop to participate in was the ‘failing workshop’ conducted by our tutor Elle. I worked in a team with Bailey who is now a good friend of mine however during this workshop it was the first time we had spoken yet we still produced some very successful work in terms of meeting the aim of the workshop. This was because the workshop was based around a universal concept - failing - which both me and Bailey were familiar with in our creative studies even though we weren't studying the exact same practice. This was enough to bring us together and allow us to collaborate using our creative strengths and communication skills to best meet the objectives. It was this workshop that gave me the idea of using the Fibonacci sequence in my micro teaching workshop as the subject to be represented visually by participants. This was because I knew the fibonacci sequence is something everyone is familiar with even when they are not familiar with the meaning of it as it is used and seen in everyday life such as advertisement like the apple for the Apple store.
As this technique helped with Elle’s workshop I hoped that with my own it would increase the success rate of reaching the aims as participants would feel more at ease with the task and also more engaged with it as they would be more likely to identify and develop interest with my workshop. This was a success in my micro teaching workshop as I received positive feedback from the participants and my tutor therefore I have definitely learned a great way of engaging with people whether it be when I am participating in a workshop scenario or conducting it myself and this will be something I take on board for future workshops and careers - ensuring I research my audiences interests internally and externally to the setting as this, as I have learned, is a key proficiency of being a good teacher and a great participant.
My favourite workshop to deliver remains to be the Foodie Friday workshop as this was the first workshop I had ever delivered a side from my micro teaching practice one. I loved that it was more successful than I could have imagined and that so many people (predominantly children) got involved and made some amazing foodie probes! I enjoyed understanding what each participant had gained from the workshop and every one of them gained something different yet they all went through the same processes of making a foodie probe. It was just as much a learning experience for myself as it was for all of the participants because I was given the privilege to witness and help many different minds and narratives in their process of creating their food probe and I saw hundreds of new ways to look at the same thing. This workshop has completely inspired me to do more like it as I think i could gain a lot of skills in terms of being collaborative, teaching and learning from others - In particular the learning aspect as I never expected the participants to be teaching me so many new and fresh perspectives on creating a food probe. My favourite probe was the ‘Lemon Man’ as I loved that the girl that made it used an actual lemon within her piece, disregarding how everyone else were using the lemons for paint stamping purposes - this showed initiative and true creativity which are things that I would like to think we helped her to explore in our workshop!
I gained techniques and knowledge from delivering this workshop such as asking participants open questions leaves room for infinite answers that you could never have thought of yourself - by asking the participants of this workshop so many open questions I have learned so much in response and have opened my mind to many new and different perspectives that has changed the way I think creatively. I want to explore further the possibilties that workshops and group projects have in terms of creating collaborative work that celebrates diverse talents and perspectives in my own practice. I have also learned how effective it can be when talking to the participants after they had completed their food plates and they were ready to be attached to a balloon. My main role was to aid with the making of the foodie plates however I really enjoyed being on the receiving end of the finished product as that was when participants were most engaged in the workshop as they held their prized plates that they had decided were ready for take off. The reason why I thought talking to the participants at this stage was the most effective point to as them questions was because it gave them a chance to reflect on what they had created and I could see them start to think and talk like true explorers of creativity - this was where the workshop became a learning experience as well as a great engagement and I really enjoyed exploring the possibilities of even the most abstract pieces of art these participants had created, getting them to really reflect on and enjoy their creations. At Explore Learning where I work part time I also find the end of session reflection to be the most memorable for both myself and the children as learning something is great but identifying what you have learned and reflecting on that process is where the fun lies and what helps people to remember it.
I gained a lot from meeting the Avans students as in teaching them new ways to visually communicate I learned some myself. In particular visual bodily performance as this is something I have not completely explored as an art medium at university and I believe it is a great technique for exploring ideas rather than just making a mind map for instance. One task that we had to complete in groups of mixed Avans/mmu students was to recreate a scene from a movie using only bodily movements and actions and we also had to do this without communicating verbally which enhanced everyones bodily communication immensely just as a blind person has better hearing. Although this proved to be a difficult task as many of the Avans students struggled without being able to talk I still found myself being able to communicate with them visually. As a group we chose to do a scene from The Lion King that involved having to visually communicate different animals with our bodies, I enjoyed this as I was able to think of some bodily actions that embodied the variations of animals but more interestingly the response my actions got from the Avans students was great as they understood which animals I was imitating without the use of sounds or words which was when a successful visual communication between us emerged. This is something I can now take on board for future scenarios not exactly the same as this but having similar issues of communication. When I teach at my part time job I often come across children that speak little to no english and I struggle to help them however I now feel that from this experience I can help them as there are so many bodily actions and movements that are universal and much more powerful than language. I am also very interested in pursuing a career in education with SEN children and I know that the skills I have gained from this particular workshop are ones that I can apply to teaching SEN children as many of them flourish through the help of visual communication more so than verbal.
Last but not least the workshop that I think I gained the most ideas from relative to my practice was the library workshop. Although the turn out of participants was nowhere near as great as Foodie Friday I still really enjoyed myself and it was a perfect end to the unit. I had never considered using paper alongside light in my own practice unless I was projecting onto paper however seeing the multicoloured fortune tellers being made and added to our paper lantern was very inspiring. I have always been interested in light and colour as a medium in my practice however I have found it quite difficult on my own to create work that embodies the qualities of light and colour I am interested in. So for me this group project as such was a massive eye opener in terms of how I could apply what I have learned from this unit to my own practice and how collaboration can explore my individual interests as well as those of the group as a collective. What I liked most about the colourful fortune teller lantern was the texture it had and in a dim lit room I could imagine how interesting and beautiful the colours and textures of the shadow created would be. Another aspect of this workshop that really helped was how cheap the resources were as the paper lanterns we bought were very cheap, paper is also cheap and plentiful and we used fairy lights inside the lantern which did not cost us a lot over all. This made me think that with more time we could be more ambitious with our processes and make more lanterns to create a wonderful installation of them. I am interested in exploring techniques like this further in collaboration with others and in my individual work as I believe it has a lot of potential to become an innovative and inspirational project.
Overall I have found that my interest in art and creativity has grown and developed in ways I could not have predicted. My passion for teaching and learning in a creative environment has been reaffirmed through participating in group collaboration projects, meeting new and amazing people and delivering workshops to others. I am extremely glad I took part in this unit as it has taught me a lot about failing, collaborating and educating - all things I will be sure to be apprehensive of and develop on in my final year at university and everything else i get up to in the future.
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Meeting Avans Students and doing workshops with them. 9th May.
Meeting the Avans students from the Netherlands was very exciting and a little different to delivering workshops to younger children as these guys were around the same age as us. It felt a bit like the beginning of unit x again when I didn't know any of the other students on the unit however this time round I had plenty of confidence in situations that took me out of my comfort zone. Gaining this comfort and confidence from delivering two workshops and collaborating with fellow students on the unit x course.
We spoke about mutual interests and contrasting cultures as well as what it is like to ride a bike in the UK, specifically Manchester in comparison to the Netherlands. It was interesting but not surprising to find out that in the Netherlands bikes are just as much participants of traffic as cars are - they were surprised on visiting Manchester to discover our many buses and trams that dominate the roads leaving little space and consideration for bikes even with the bike lanes being put into place it still is not how it is in the Netherlands. I spoke to Chantal and Marmer in particular - two girls from the Netherlands that were interested in the boy girl ratio of bike riders in Manchester (4 boys to 1 girl) and also the issue with ‘safety’ and ‘sporty’ being two things that get muddled when it comes to biking in the UK. I agreed with these girls and I really appreciated that they showed such passion and interest in the topic and found myself engaging with it more so because of their enthusiasm which is something I will be sure to bare in mind for future workshop deliveries for example.
Then came our part! We wanted to introduce to the Avans students different ways of visually communicating in the hope it would help them to think differently and create the most successful delivery possible for their pitch on Friday to the university. To do this we devised a couple of group activities in which there was a mix of us educators and the Avans students per group to ensure we were all participants in a collaborative task as well as being able to help the avans students with any queries and visual qualities they wished to explore but were unsure how to do it. For instance one of the tasks involved using our bodies to reenact a scene from a movie and we chose the Lion King therefore I was able to think of some bodily actions that embodied the variations of animals - giving the avans students something to go off and the confidence to look a bit ‘silly’ in order to have a bit of fun and participate in the workshop fully.
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Z Arts Workshop! 3rd May.
Having little time to prepare, we took the ideas from the foodie friday workshop and modified them slightly. The aim of the workshop was now to create a rocket with a (drained) egg that was to be your astronaut that you had to protect within the rocket so that when dropped from a height your egg would remain in tact. We were going to draw little eyes on the eggs however we rethought this as we didn't want participants getting to attached to there eggs incase they didn't survive the journey. For this workshop we had a lot of materials in comparison to the foodie friday workshop meaning that no rocket looked the same whatsoever. This also meant that me, Rory, Amber, Aoife and Chris (a helper at Z Arts) were able to help the children see all the different materials as potential rocket components which introduced an aim of opening their minds to new and unexpected possibilities. Picture number 1 at the top is of a girl and her rocket that her and her little sister had made together extremely successfully! I had helped them by presenting them with possibilities such as “this orange and yellow tissue paper looks a bit like flames coming off a rocket” and from that and their own creative style they came up with this beautiful rocket which for the record protected the astronaut egg very well. I really liked how they made a flag out of a straw, some tape and a bit of leek which I would have never put together to get such an outcome yet when looking at the picture of the rocket it couldn't be anything else but the flag on top of it!
Another rocket I thought was amazing was one done by a trio of girls that showed clear and well thought out methods and processes in their outcome (also protecting the egg astronaut). On observing them I discovered they had brilliant communication and collaboration skills - everyone had an input which also showed in the final structure. When they learned that the rocket was going to be dropped rather than launched they made their rocket a parachute - I thought this was great and it made me think of how we as ‘educators’ need to be prepared for anything which these girls had clearly come through with in their rocket.
I found it interesting delivering a similar workshop to the foodie friday one in such a different setting - although we weren't in a school classroom we were still delivering the workshop alongside two authoritative figures (Gill and Suzanne - Z Arts Creative Learning directors) and the children’s parents had dropped them off like they would at school. Never the less there was a sense of excitement and fun in the classroom that you wouldn't find in a school classroom. The only main difference from the foodie friday workshop was that the age range was more concentrated (ages 6 up to 11 if I remember correctly) and I think this is also what made it feel a bit like a school classroom. I really enjoyed this experience as I feel it was the stepping stone in-between the foodie friday workshop and working in education such as primary and secondary schools. Z Arts had a balance of fun, creativity and collaboration whilst also having well respected schedules and rules to work and learn by. At the end of the workshop after clearing away, Gill offered the chance to get in touch about similar things that would be ongoing and I can definitely say I will be enquiring about any summer projects that need help with as I would really like to gain more experience with Z Arts and their many opportunities they offer children such as ‘cultural diversity’ and ‘creative learning’ - I think this will help me in delivering and understanding the different workshops that take place at Z Arts (and anywhere for that matter) and the different responses they get from participants.
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Foodie Flyday Workshop! 28th April.
For me, this was the highlight of the unit so far. As a group we worked together strongly after only knowing each other for just over a month. Everyone’s skills were put to excellent use through their roles within the workshop and I found myself helping others with their roles and learning new skills because of it such as attaching a balloon to a foodie space probe (one small example). My role in the group was a ‘Probe Designer’ as I have explained in the picture above of a page from my note book in preparation for the workshop. I really enjoyed this role as it meant I could talk to and get to know the participants taking part in our workshop. I found that I got a very positive response when I asked participants at the end what they had created - many didn't have a specific ‘thing’ in mind during their process but when asked the question and reflected on it I found that people would know exactly what it was they had done whether it be an abstract painting for the ‘aliens’ as “they don't speak our language so wouldn't understand words.” or a ‘Lemon Man’ with a purple lemon on his head (image 1). I enjoyed understanding what each participant had gained from the workshop and every one of them gained something different yet they all went through the same processes of making a foodie probe. It was just as much a learning experience for myself as it was for all of the participants because I was given the privilege to witness and help many different minds and narratives in their process of creating their food probe and I saw hundreds of new ways to look at the same thing. This workshop has completely inspired me to do more like it as I think i could gain a lot of skills in terms of being collaborative, teaching and learning from others - In particular the learning aspect as I never expected the participants to be teaching me so many new and fresh perspectives on creating a food probe. My favourite probe was the ‘Lemon Man’ as I loved that the girl that made it used an actual lemon within her piece, disregarding how everyone else were using the lemons for paint stamping purposes - this showed initiative and true creativity which are things that I would like to think we helped her to explore in our workshop!
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Foodie Friday Workshop - practice rehearsal.
25th April
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Foodie FLYday workshop idea
Foodie Friday was a difficult workshop to plan for as most of us had returned home over the easter break making communication difficult as we had to use texting and Facebook messenger as our main form of communication. However our group managed to communicate successfully through this form and everyone’s ideas were listened to and reflected upon in the process of creating our workshop plan. I think that this form of communication has developed my skills in collaboration under such odd circumstances.
We eventually all agreed to stick to a food theme and as Danielle’s EdLab group were asked by edlab to create a space themed workshop we decided to combine these two ideas. In doing so we came up with food probes to be ‘sent into space’ - using paper plates and helium balloons we were going to get people to draw or sculpt onto their plates what they believe is the best Earth dish that they want to share with outer space. This idea is fun and playful meaning people will easily be able to engage with it as well as having a reflective and meaningful quality that is getting people to think of and appreciate food in an artistic light. I am looking forward to hearing feedback for this workshop idea and I hope we are able to deliver it as I am intrigued to see the response to this task at hand and what different people come up with as their ‘best dish’ as the question is open to personal experience and preference meaning we will get a variety of foodie probes creating a more successful piece of work as a collaboration! Diverse people and outcomes in collaborative workshops is what I am finding the most interesting in this unit x course as I am used to working alone on my own interests and no one elses so this process is very new and exciting and I am learning and liking a lot of things I never thought I would this year at university.
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Origami Workshop idea
In my group for the library workshop we originally wanted to make a revision wall of lots of multi coloured postit notes to create a collaborative, colourful piece of art work in itself. We wanted to do this as through unit x we have learned to collaborate our ideas and we wanted the last workshop we did to reflect upon this and hopefully touch others with the same learning experience. As a group, when pitching our idea to our tutors, we agreed that we were on the right track with the ideas of collaboration and colour for a stress relieving library workshop however we needed to tweak it slightly to make it our own.
Origami was introduced as an idea - making colourful origami that could be collaborated into a much larger art sculpture. We wanted our workshop to be a place students could visit and participate with for as little as 5 minutes to as much as 2 hours - we would teach them how to make a ‘stress reliever’ and a ‘fortune teller’ (something to leave with us to make a sculpture with and also something to take away with them that could potentially aid them in their studies). The idea of making this sculpture a lantern of sorts came from past influences and people that had done it before that we had researched. I really love the idea of making a collaboration piece and by extending it to a light form as well reflects on the warmth, hope and joy that would go into the making of it as people take a moment to relax, rethink and revive from their studies.
I have spoke about light as an interesting medium for myself in my work and by doing this workshop I hope to have a better understanding of how I can combine light and the act of collaboration in my own practice. I also love that we will be making ‘fortune tellers’ to put onto the lantern as I remember these from school and I believe they will be familiar with everyone, provoking positivity and nostalgia.
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Digital Storytelling
I attended this workshop on the 5th of April as Elle, my tutor, informed me about it and I was interested in the technological aspects of this workshop and wanted to know more about how MMU were going to explore the realms of digital storytelling.
In this workshop I learned about an app called Orasma that brought a 2D image on a piece of paper (for instance) to life when you held the app camera on your phone up to the image. The brief was that as a group we were going to create visual posters for the children’s book fair in june that had poems on them written by children from different schools. The idea was to have video recordings of the children reciting their poems that would activate when brought to life with the Orasma app. This workshop is still in the making however it has made me think more about how i could apply these techniques to my own practice as I am interested in the level of involvement the viewers have with the work by them becoming the final piece of the puzzle for the work to be completed and viewed fully. This kind of collaboration is something I wish to explore further as it combines my recent interest in technology as a material and makes the viewers a part of the work.
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