Art Students Become Art Teachers for a Day at Turner Contemporary
Date posted:Monday 4th July 2011
Fourteen sixth form art students from SLGGS became art teachers for the day on Monday 27 June when they participated in an educational event for local primary school children at Turner Contemporary in Margate. The event comprised a variety of workshops exploring art, inspired by the works of Turner and was an opportunity for local children to discover hidden artistic talents and interests. Year 12 student, Anna Soppitt, has written the following report of the event which took place on the hottest day of the year so far...
"We had been thrown into the stressful world of teaching. Fourteen sixth formers off to teach a wide range of primary school children about the inspirational work of Turner…easy! We arrived at Turner Contemporary in the blistering heat, where all of us were tempted by the shores of Margate and the picture perfect seascape. It suddenly became very apparent why Turner found Margate so alluring! However we had a job to do.
We quickly got set up and were, after a quick brief, given our first class of children. Our first group, consisting of Izzy Townley, Rebecca Marsh, Beth Sutcliffe, Milly Cox and Lara Bland, bravely accepted the challenge of teaching a staggering thirty-seven 8-11 year olds about Turner’s distinctive expressionist style. The kids were encouraged to be creative in a fun and adventurous way without using paint brushes. Instead they used sponges, sticks and their own fingers to create collages and paintings."
Lara on the children’s work: ‘They captured the essence of Turner and I could definitely see some budding artists emerging, however they didn’t quite understand the whole concept because of their age’
Lara on the day: ‘I enjoyed the day despite feeling quite rushed!’
"Next up was the group I was in with Katherine Beeching, Beth Mathias-Williams, Hannah Jordan and Jessica Clements. We split our workshop into five sections, using a different piece of Turner’s work to inspire each one. We aimed to tackle all of his most famous pieces as well as teaching the children how to respond to them. Our session ranged from blowing colourful brusho inks with straws to drawing portraits, all attempted in the style of Turner. We got to run our workshop twice because of the uneven number of groups, however I felt that both went similarly well, despite us being more confident the second time round."
Hannah said, ‘I really loved working with the younger ones and seeing all their different takes on one image’
"Finally, Harriet Adkin, Georgia Knott, Johanna Hollander and Leander Frogley took over. They wanted to convey to the children how different colours could be used to express different moods and emotions. They used poster paints and focused on mixing colours to create atmosphere."
Harriet commented: ‘It went really well! The children were so sweet. You forget how much encouragement they need though. Overall I found it really rewarding and loved being called miss!’
Harriet also got interviewed during the day: ‘The camera was right in my face! They asked me things like, why do I like art? So I told them I just think it’s a great way to express yourself!’ Very in keeping with Turner.
"I asked Izzy to describe the day in one word, she pondered, ‘fun’ and then changed her mind and said ‘no, I would say it was eclectic!’"
Report by Anna Soppitt
View images of the day in our online gallery
