DM7908 FINAL PROJECT PORTFOLIO
& REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
UNDEREARTH Report:
Collaborative arts, technology and environmental schools project - UNDEREARTH 2022.
Summary:
An artists led 12 week arts and technology project to enhance learning in the classroom through the ideas of ‘UNDEREARTH’ giving inspiration for the projects theme.
Outline of the project:
Words from the intro section of the www.UNDEREARTH.co.uk project website:
“UNDEREARTH is a digital environmentally focused project exploring what happens beneath the ground as spring approaches. Through a series of interactive workshops, Lead Artist, Katt Grover and Mentee Artist, Tina Scahill explore creative coding and digital art with two groups of pupils from primary schools in Andover, Hampshire.
Using their knowledge of life underground, gained from award-winning charity, Andover Trees United, the groups are creating immersive fantasy ecologies, transforming traditional storytelling, and using art as eco-activism. The final exhibition will take place in May 2022 and will be open to the public for a limited time.
The project will end in an immersive interactive exhibition where visitors will be transported through their senses. They will see crowds of coded creepy crawlies, listen to sleepy seeds emerge from dormancy and experience art that springs to life with augmented reality. Featuring work created by Year 4 students from two local primary schools.”
The project set up:
The project was coordinated by Katt Gover, lead artist, I was employed as a mentee artist to provide support to all aspects of the project. The programme was initiated by Test Valley Borough Council and CAS (Chapel Arts Studio) funded by the Arts Council England and National Lottery project grants.
The 12 week project aimed to; inspire high quality digital art to Andover schools, teach coding skills to young people, learn about our environment and an appreciation of it. This report describes the process and findings from each workshop and the final exhibition of the children’s work at Chapel Arts Studio. The exhibition ran from the 6th April —1st May, Thursday to Saturday 11am to 4pm.
The Project was to look at the earth. CAS has previously initiated work for their CAS:AIR projects which worked with local school children. UNDEREARTH was conceived by Katt Grover, we worked together from her framework to implement arts education and technology into the two schools that were chosen to participate.
<< Katt Grover
Tina Scahill>>
The Team:
Katt Grover
Role: Lead artist & facilitator
Katt experiments with digital and analogue mediums to create engaging, meaningful, and immersive experiences that stimulate curiosity, provoke new conversations and evoke multiple senses. She has over a decade of experience working in learning and development and instructional design and has designed, developed and delivered sessions in a variety of formats such as lectures, seminars, tutorials, practical workshops, e-learning, and mobile learning. Her bespoke courses have covered an array of subjects and skills in both corporate and creative environments.
Tina Scahill
Role: Mentee artist
A multidisciplinary artist working in the digital domain and traditional forms of painting. Tina uses text, poetry and personal stories within paintings to weave a narrative, perhaps a memory or a feeling. Through the digital space Tina is interested in transmedia storytelling, blurring the boundaries between paint and digital, to make art that speaks. Her interests in teaching and mentoring others is part of her career development.
Role of the schools:
To identify children who would benefit from a creative and digital idea making sessions. The sessions were 2.5hrs. School A in the morning and School B in the afternoon, it was a very busy and full-on day.
For the purpose of my report the differences of the selected schools identified the disparity in education, especially those of social and educational need. School B had a significantly high number of children with Special Educational Needs (SEN), we were not aware of this before starting the lessons in school, so we had to adapt the lessons as we went along to try and keep engagement. Managing behaviour took a long time in School B, the children felt comfortable once they knew their would be a routine, every Wednesday for 6 weeks.
School A selected their children based on a number of factors, IT interest, art interest and those who needed to build self-esteem and other skills. School A promoted the programme to the children’s care givers. School B did not select their children on this basis, some of them didn’t know anything about why they were there or what to expect, their parents had not been informed about the project.
Additional Instructors:
Teacher: Chloe Finlay-Black - Year 4 2022
School: Portway Junior School (School A).
Chloe was given the development time to spend with us and the children during the 6 weeks of workshop sessions, and participated in all the activities the children were involved in. Chloe also booked the IT suite and the school hall for the creative programming we used. Ms Black was very engaged with the new technology she wanted to share her learning with colleagues once the project was finished. “This project was fantastically thought through and organised. It benefited both students and staff and we would welcome further projects such as this with open arms.”
No teachers - Lunchtime supervisor as an ‘extra pair of hands’
School: Vigo Junior School (School B)
Limited space meant that all activities were held in the IT suite even the messy charcoal play. Limited teaching resource left a disconnect between the programme of UNDEREARTH and the additional CPD or whole school learning that could have occurred.
Wendy Davis
Organisation: Andover Trees United, https://www.andovertrees.org.uk/harmony-woods-project
Role: Trustee and Operations manager for schools
The exploration of local woodland accessible for school children to explore was readily available from Andover Trees United. Wendy Davis - a previous junior school teacher for 30 years, created the project to bring learning out of the classroom and into the environment. They are an excellent advocate for the project with lots of enthusiasm for the questions the children asked and the subjects we covered.
Alex Marshall
Organisation: Andover Trees United
Role: Environmental lead - zoologist
Alex was instrumental on the first meeting day, they had organised the scientific instrument’s for the children to dig and discover bugs in the variety of leaf matter, soil and grasses. The joy of discovery could be heard with squeals of delight and shouts of “I found this”. Alex spoke with authority on the woodland environment, the importance of the creatures and how they work with the earth. All the children were engaged in the activity all morning and this built a memory for us to use in the other weeks of UNDEREARTH. “Experiencing Harmony Woods in real life awakens the senses and creates longer lasting memories and greater inspiration.”
The commissioners:
David Dixon Director CAS, https://www.chapelartsstudios.co.uk
Organisation: Chapel Arts Studios - CAS
Facilitator of the UNDEREARTH residency and the employment of Katt Grover to deliver that theme. Also the role of Mentee was written into the project and I applied for this. The CAS exhibition space held the final collective exhibition for both schools, we curated the pieces made by the children into final pieces of art, we wanted the children to see what their creations could become and not just have them on display boards as kids artwork.
“Experiencing benefits of external practitioners coming into the school, introducing staff to new technologies and ways of working. It underlined the idea that art is a far richer seam to mine than just the tools of drawing, painting and ceramics. Creative approaches have benefits that can be used across the entire curriculum.” David Dixon Director at CAS - Chapel Arts Studios
Faye Perkins Arts Officer, https://www.testvalley.gov.uk/communityandleisure/artsandculture
Organisation: Test Valley Borough Council
Faye Recruited the role of mentee through an ACE grant and was able to provide funding for an up-and-coming artist whose exposure to the project would assist in their practice and development. Arts Council Funding via Test Valley Borough Council.
“As commissioner I feel that it is important that we enable collaboration between artists to support the possibilities of creativity both with one another to develop your own individual practise, but in turn to enhance and improve the experience of students when projects like
this take place in schools and focus on children’s learning. The way that you and Katt worked together to explore this topic and brought it to life for students was excellent and taking their school experiences and developing the exhibition adds an additional level of
learning and experiences for children that simply wouldn’t have been achieved in their school setting alone.”
Faye Perkins TVBC Arts Officer
Harmony Woods field trip
Meeting the 24 children at Harmony Woods was very exciting. They were enthusiastic for the morning out of school and were so pleased to be doing something different. See Appendix 1 for location of woods.
As part of the project we wanted to get the children to meet each other and come together as a group, Katt organised a meeting exercise where they chatted with children about themselves and their likes and dislikes, she also created a game for them to play of rock paper scissors and stone, when you were out you had to get behind the winning person. Much excitement from such a simple idea, with lots of noise and laughter.
Wendy Davis and Alex Marshall from Andover Trees United were fabulous hosts for our exploration morning. Wendy (Trustee and Operations manager for schools) showed us the Iron Age ditch spoke about the trees and the earth, the habitats and the rare birds coming back to nest. Alex a zoologist - gave us a practical and scientific approach to the discovery session. The children used pouters and a selection of bug hunting and bug catching equipment. We looked in the ground in the grass and under wood piles and found all the items from our big bingo challenge!
The children filled out special field journals to document their experience and to assist in guiding them for the next steps of the project. The video below is of a child making music with the flint they found... A pure moment of joy and exploration.
The children really enjoyed the hands-on nature of the discovery day. They were interested to hear what we would be doing next and waved us goodbye, we felt very enthused from what we had heard the children saying and their mornings engagement.
School sessions - 5 weeks:
Week 1. Subterranean Settings
We met the children in their schools. We used charcoal, collage and oil pastels to create ‘soilscapes’ and experiment with line and texture using these traditional materials before moving on to digital.
In Scratch, the children created digital canvases using their artwork as inspiration. Particular attention was spent on texture, shapes and line and the children were shown the abstract work of Wassily Kandinsky to illustrate the concept of abstraction for them to apply to their own work.
Katt the lead artist wanted to gather as much material from the children as possible so it give us the time to put all the work together for the exhibition. The vision of interactive posters a soundscape, AR art posters, animation, and stop motion all will come together in the 12 week project.
The feedback from the children and staff was encouraging and let me have an insight into how they felt about the project.
The headteacher from School A said that having the opportunity to teach the staff and children new technologies and ways of thinking was an enhancement to the education. Most of all after this session School A children agreed that they had fun creating pictures with charcoal, creating backgrounds with sticking paper and texture to the roll of paper and that they had considered their trip to the woods a great focal point for their work.
In School A before the session we were able to visit their own woodland area to re-familiarise themselves with the earth.
School B did not have an outdoor area so we used images of the field trip to remind the children of what they had done the previous week.
Week 2. Creepy Characters
We worked through the UNDEREARTH Workbook using the ideas and notes we had made in the Field Journal. This session we focussed on the subterranean world, sketches were made of a character of a chosen bug or creature - giving them attributes that would allow us to tell their story. As a creative writer Katt spoke of plot development and how that creates a successful story. Exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. Little red riding hood was the example we gave and all children were familiar with the story.
We discussed the plans for the final exhibition and the artwork we would be exhibiting (a projected collaborative coded artwork). We also talked about how the exhibition would be a story, written and told by the children, through our digital art explorations.
The character design was completed in three stages:
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Filled out character sheets in our UNDEREARTH Workbooks, sketched what they might look like and wrote about their personalities.
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The children simplified the character designs using shapes cut from paper.
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They digitally recreated the simplified characters in the open source program Scratch (available in most schools).
Week 3. Nematode Dreams
This week we explored ‘plot’ through stop-motion animation. We took the characters they had created in week 2 and asked them to work in pairs or threes with new ideas and merging their stories. As a group we created props and storyboarded their narratives. The children directed their own short animations, equipped with iPads, tripods and green-screens, the results were phenomenal!
The hands-on approach to this week and use of stop-motion animation introduced the children to the concept of traditional frame-by-frame animation in preparation for the following weeks advanced digital animation workshop.
Characterisation and developing motion thinking at School A became a very physical thing. The children wanted to act out their character story in a physical drama, we were lucky enough to have the hall space to allow them to do this. I thought this element of natural learning was amazing, children took a concept and through play and let themselves go.
Just to note: One child from School A told me that they were so excited that they had woken up at 6am as they couldn’t wait to start their day.
Week 4. It’s Alive!
How will the characters move? What are their feelings? What special skills does your character have? We joined each other in our workbook activity, before transferring the rest of the session into the IT room.
This week was coding, using Scratch to animate the digital characters, getting them to move in interesting ways, they also added sound which they felt was important too.
I was able to take some of the children outside of the class for impromptu feedback about the sessions, I recorded these with some pre set questions to gauge how the project was going for them as an individual. The videos were used in the final show and gave Katt and myself a richer understanding of how the children felt about the project.
Please keep your mouse pointer over the video to hear the interviews - Recordings by Tina Scahill 2022
Week 5 Augmented Reality Experiments
All the materials had been made for the show, we could now show the pupils AR and we gave them an introduction using plasticine modelling. I helped to guide this session through my recent learning experience with augmented reality and 3D design with my masters course. We used lidar technology on ipads and mobile phones to scan in the children’s 3D plasticine models with Qlone app software.
Issues we had were the stiffness of plasticine as a models slowly fell over, the children enjoyed making their UNDEREARTH characters come to life. The software allows the items to move randomly on the screen which brought much joy to the children especially being able to see an AR character on their hands or next to them!
Also in this final ‘in school’ session, both groups of children presented their work to the year group. The children were visibly really proud of the work they had made and answered questions on how they did things and what did they enjoyed most.
The technology unavailable at School A allowed us to show the year group the AR models in action. They had an overhead screen linked to a computer with a optical pen so the video could be shown to the whole assembly. Exclamations and much giggling ensued. School B had the bare minimum of technology and most of which we didn’t have access to this meant we could not share the AR experience more widely with the year group.
All of the children were bursting with pride with what they had achieved, the direct feedback from the children was that they did want the session to end, they wanted to learn more, they also wanted to miss lunch break to carry on!
Findings and outcomes
Throughout the 6 weeks in both schools the children were engaged, were able to think and problem solve. They had space to imagine new worlds, create new stories and let their imagination run wild!
The project work carried on for Katt and myself as she curated the show at the CAS gallery and I contributed with the paratext (additional materials) such as photography, video, stop motion animation, poetry and a painting of my experience in Harmony Woods.
We used the backgrounds the children had made into a augmented reality artwork that had the children’s characters moving in and out of the landscape.
My findings and outcomes
I painted a picture in response to a frozen moment in time at Harmony Woods. I had sat down amongst the little trees and wrote a poem called Be still:
Be Still
As the wind blows through the grass
I can hear the birds
And the sounds of far off traffic
I can feel the sun on my face
And its warm
And the breeze is cold
The cackle of crows
And I am still
In the middle of the woods
Young saplings they grow
but are asleep
Waiting, waiting for better times
Be still and just listen
Be at peace
I utilised 5 sentences from the poem to sum up the world I was imagining. These were:
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Be still
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As the wind blows through the grass
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The breeze is cold
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The cackle of crows
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Just listen
With Katt’s assistance we used printed touch triggers behind the painting to activate the words and my voice came out of the painting. You could play these five sentences in any order making a new poem each time. I was really pleased with the way the painting turned out and the interactivity gave the context of a painting new meaning. Something which has changed my creative direction as I am now exploring making more of a painting that just the first visual interest, enabling a narrative to be uncovered in other ways through technology.
From the children’s long lengths of idea making paper rolls, I cut out all the elements and created a stop motion animation (190 frames) to tell a story form the items the children had made. This was a really pleasing video that amused the children when they saw their character or UNDEREARTH creation doing something with sounds affects.
Stop motion animation made with children’s work by Tina Scahill
The centre piece of the exhibition was a coded animation from the children’s Scratch programmes produced in week 4. Katt brought them all together into a cacophony of movement and sound. We also play with shadow tools we had made from sticks, as the projection allowed for light play adding another element to the exhibition – this came from an idea while in the space, showing how by keeping a playful mind plans can adapt and new creations can be included.
The interviews I created with the children from schools A and B played on a loop in the entrance to the chapel building. We lowered ceiling height of the chapel with the use of canopy pulling the under earth feeling into the room. Also, Katt employed a sound bath recording to give ‘other worldly’ audio experience enhancing the feelings of sound as we might here if we were UNDEREARTH. Katt also wanted to enable all senses so we had a room diffuser providing carrot and pine tree scents – the final show was a multi sensory experience.
Conclusions
School A and School B were very different. In leadership and management, in enabling the project and focus on the children involved.
The project onboarding of the two school was done by CAS. Agreements for the projects to go ahead were made and a time frame was discussed. A place in the timetable and the days were finalised to a Wednesday. Myself and Katt Grover decided to run the sessions back to back with each school to leave us enough time to pull the show together in the time we had left.
Seeing both schools on the one day was brilliant for analysing the progress and children’s reactions to the project. I could easily compare what worked well and what didn’t in each environment.
The qualitative data gathered from the UNDEREARTH project (Gover & Scahill 2022) has been valuable and I am pleased that two schools used in the project were so different. This enabled me to observe what technology was available and how technology is used in schools. My findings from this project lead me to believe that there is a disconnect between time for teachers to integrate new technology into their lesson planning and using a creative thinking model would assist in better engagement for the learners. I have made some training materials for a lesson plan LINK HERE. Continual professional development is really key to the implementation of new skills and updating skills for the education sector, I would like to investigate further how much weight is given to this from the Headships of schools, and what they are battling against on a day-to-day scenario that is stopping a place of learning involving metacognition.
The selection of the children seemed to be a key factor. School B have more than average Special Educational Needs registered children, their ethos is that they never turn a child away, and they have a lot of staff providing one to one and group break out sessions to enable inclusivity in each of their educational plans.
School A had a very different cohort, the children were selected on the basis of art enjoyment, computer skills, and issues of self-esteem, personal growth. The children of School A cohort were extremely well behaved and with the assistance of a classroom teacher who knew them, the sessions ran smoothly.
This key point was missing from School B, there was no known member of teaching staff available to come with the group for the 2.5hrs each week. Their resources seemed very stretched and after some communication we were given a lunchtime supervisor to assist with the most challenging children.
Those children in School B with challenges were still able to participate in the exercises, we changed the format of the work into smaller sessions of creativity. We provided physical play situations – throwing polystyrene planes outside, singing and ‘Simon says’ activities.
The contrast between the two settings was also highlighted in the use of technology, all the children from both schools were able to use technology. They understood the concept of stop motion animation, they played with the Scratch program and were able to add movement to the characters they had drawn. In School B some of the children instigated sounds immediately into their programming because it was fun.
The environment within the setting was important. This factor made a huge difference to the learning, thought process and the actions of the children. In school A we met each week in the hall, we had lots of space, tables to use and importantly the floor to spread out on an allow the children to lay, sit or stand. We also took our shoes off, this small difference was astutely identified by Katt Grover, she is neurodiverse, and for her comfort prefers to feel grounded. The children loved the freedom of not being constrained by their shoes, it was almost as if they psychology relaxed them, and this relaxation enabled the children to engage better I believe. School A had a woodland area to go to, and a specified IT suite with all programmes enabled.
In School B space is at a premium, because the project was identified as IT we were give the IT room, miss communication between the staff became apparent when teachers wanted to use the facility that they had booked out. The messy charcoal drawing and cutting and pasting activities had to be squashed onto the floor space and when the weather warmed up there was a piece of concrete outside the room which we utilised. We didn’t have permissions to use the computers, so we had to overcome this at the time whilst engaging the children in the activities we had organised.
The UNDEREARTH project allowed me to gain primary evidence. Plus informal interviews with the staff and children connected to the project. The technology involved confirmed my belief that UNDEREARTH was a project they could implement long after our delivery had finished. This has spurred me on to think about developing the resources to enable teachers and learners to access future technology and future thinking. An idea backed up by this quote by David Dixon – Director at CAS:
“With our increasingly uncertain future, the current education system and approach, structured in its industrial-age origins requires an innovative overhaul. If , when I visit schools I am finding such a marked difference between approaches of the taught curriculum vs those of practicing artists delivering workshops, then I can only find that this mismatch reflects a disparity been real world creative activity and ‘taught’ creative activity. Collaboration, problem creating and solving, comfort with new experiences and uncertainty, confidence to risk failure are not as present as they should be”.
Opportunities that have arisen since the UNDEREARTH programme include; running creative workshops in the town centre for children, teaching at university and enthusing others to seek out new forms of expression. I am also a member of the NSEAD National Society for Education in Art and Design, and in 2023 will be an observer to the general council committee so I can get a feel for the decisions being made to advocate for the change in policy of arts education in the national curriculum.
The project also made me believe in myself, I am now thinking about applying for a PhD, this would develop my research of arts education with technology, and its place improving our skills in society.
Please now visit my underpinning approach to the project and the art of it consultancy that has grown from UNDEREARTH
The Art of It is a consultancy is an idea to assist teachers in growing creativity in their classrooms and providing CPD support through utilising teacher practitioners
The content of this webpage is for my MA course in Digital Media Practice. All references can be found in the buttons at the bottom of the page. All design work is my own unless otherwise stated. June 2022.If you have any questions please contact me scahilldesigner@gmail.com