ArtLab Summer School Day 7 – 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 Thursday the 4th of July, my group started with “Listen and Draw” – a silent disco making drawings to Sound Art. We started slowly, but everyone seemed to engage pretty well. We put on some Jazz for the group when the students became restless, and then let them choose some of their own songs.

Next was “Making Moves” – creating stories, sculptures and 3d scans. I let Mae lead the session to see new approaches. The students split into two groups and created their own stories to present to the group. One group told a story about a man going to prison, the other told a story about river pollution. We ran short on time this session, and didn’t manage to scan anything in, but some other groups got some pretty cool scans!

Finally, we went to the “Selfie Sphere” room – creating self-portraits and taking 360 degree photos. The group was pretty low energy after lunch, but they made some very lovely masks and expressed great creativity. I found telling them they can take as much creative liberty as they want definitely helped.