ArtLab Summer School Day 6 -Alfred Sutton Primary School Year 5

ArtLab is working with Primary Schools in the Reading area on our summer school programme. The students come to the University of Reading Art Department and, with the guidance of students at the University, experiment with new techniques of making art, new technologies and creative ways of thinking. The day consists of three activities: Selfie Sphere, Making Moves, and Listen and Draw.

On the 3rd of July my group started in the Listen and Draw exercise – a silent disco making drawings to Sound Art. Many of the students liked the sounds we played for them, and we let them choose some music towards the end of the session.

Next was the Making Moves activity – creating stories, sculptures and 3d scans. I told the group we would be 3d scanning in this session, which I found prepared them in what they created. We scanned lots of creative inventions and someone even tried to scan their hand! The group cooperated very well, and we had a great time!

Our final activity was the Selfie Sphere – creating self-portraits and taking 360 degree photos. I found there was some frustration to drawing the self portraits, but everyone seemed to enjoy taking 360 degree photos. There was a lot of cooperation between students as the camera requires multiple people to work effectively. We did have a number of creative self portraits as well – I found it helpful to tell the group that they could be as creative as possible. A big challenge with this project has been combating the preconceptions that school and home has put on what art can be or do. Hopefully after engaging with this, the students can consider new and exciting ways to do art in their own lives.

Finally, we took our self portrait masks and marched in a parade down the Art Department to take a big 360 degree photo together as a class.

Thanks for reading!