Plog

The challenge was set by The Mighty Creatives - to make six short films, in six days, with with six (or seven!) pupils in each of the six schools…

Off we went - filming, animating, acting, drawing, photography, interviews, sound recording - we used a huge range of techniques to capture pupils thoughts about their work with Creative Partnerships.

The six schools were all involved in the first year of CP work in Lincolnshire - each school worked with different practitioners, and ran different projects. The films visually reflect the nature of the projects, whilst taking a focus on pupil involvement and their points of view.

Throughout our adventures we kept a blog, click below to see what happened and watch the films..

For the past few weeks we’ve been helping people at the Emmanuel school work towards their Bronze art award… A whirlwind project, super-quick stencil making, cutting, spraying, and scrubbing paint off our hands.

We barely had time to delve into the complexity of different techniques, but hopefully the whole thing has been inspiring - we hope that some people might have the confidence now to use stencils and sprays in other artwork. It was a real pleasure to work with the year 9 pupils - everyone has worked incredibly hard and achieved so much. We just wish we’d had longer… We’ll add more pictures once the boards are finished. In the meantime, if you worked with us on this project, please tell us what you thought! Leave any comments below.

If you’re thinking of doing this yourself, be sure to visit the Montana shop - a wonderful world of colours, cans, paints and pens.

This was a Creative Partnerships project and involved 2 more artists, Rachel making masks and Julie exploring set design with other year 9 pupils - we’re looking forward to seeing what they’ve been up to…

Last year, Creative Partnerships asked us to get involved with two induction sessions that they ran for teachers.  Whilst CP staff were busy explaining the details of working with CP, we were there to create a storyboard.

Filled with suggestions, ideas and discussion, the 2 days gave us loads of exciting ideas to take away… The resulting animation is a short film that shows the journey that schools go on when they work with CP .

Thanks go to all the teachers on the induction sessions, to CP staff Becky, Lucy and Carol, and to Jo Pindersmith and pupils at Annesley Primary School.

Apologies to our two readers (us) for the lack of any updates for geological ages - we’ve been excruciatingly busy with so many projects. What this will mean though, is lots more photos and videos to add very soon.

Speaking of which:

We’ve been trying to use blogs as a way to document projects and get schools to share and talk about what they’re doing. You can see how the experiment unfolds at the Creswell Roots site and Fountaindale Art Blog.

It’s a lot of work trying to keep everything updated, but it has been good to get things up online right away - hopefully the schools will take things further and we can take a rest!

Pupils in year 7 at All Saints school (where we previously painted the walls) worked together to make a short french film about the busy weekend of ‘Samuel’ and his friends. In just four short days the 60 students got involved in character and set building, drawing story boards, controlling the lights, cameras, and computers, and creating their own little sequences of animation in teams.

It was a really fun project. But very hectic! If we’d had more time the characters could have had armatures, that would have been ideal. As it was, under the lights and with the hot summer sun, the models became quite floppy and squashed by the end! In defiance of the pressures though, the students created some great work, really imaginative and we saw some very talented modelers and animators.

The film has been premiered at school, seen by staff and other pupils, and will be used as a resource for future curriculum work around hobbies and leisure. The hope is that other new resources with grow around it - worksheets based on the characters and story, questions about the various scenes… It was also a great way for the students to absorb French vocabulary, and if we do this again that’s an aspect we’ll try to focus more on.

This was a Creative Partnerships BAM project.

Talking of bones (which we were before all the technical problems):

Here’s a short film animated by young people visiting Creswell Crags last Saturday. If you don’t know, Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge full of ancient caves. The Caves are full of the remains of animals and human tools,  and they’re the only known place where you can see Ice Age rock art anywhere in this country! Pictures that are around 13,000 years old.

Well, what an inspiring place! Working outside under a tent, children drew Ice Age animals, hunters and scenes using crayons and charcoal - Afterward animating them really quickly, to tell simple stories.

The changing light in the tent really added to the effect! Like flickering fire-light. Later we added photographs of the rock walls in the background.

The music was made by Newgate Lane primary school on their hand made instruments.

We’ve been thinking about bones for a recent project at Newgate Lane Primary School!

Class four cast their minds back 13,000 years to create ice age art and bone flutes for Shine Week at Creswell Crags. The bones that they made have been buried in an archaeological dig box for other children to explore, unearth and use to make massive mammoth skeletons, or scary saber tooth shapes!

The flutes that they each made, using hand tools, wood and bone (PVC pipe) are available for visitors to the Crags to play and admire, and so too is a stoneage spooky cave soundtrack that class four composed and recorded with their own instruments.

Keep your eyes (and ears) peeled - the music they recorded will feature in an exciting cave art animation that we’ll add soon…

As if all that wasn’t enough, the children made their own drawing implements and sketched cave art with natural inks and charcoal.

This 3 day Creative Partnerships project, provided interactive resources for lots of school visits arranged to Creswell Crags for Shine Week.