Review/Exhibition: Kaffe Fassett

Last Wednesday I attend the Teachers Evening at The Fashion and Textiles museum 'The Future of Knitwear'. The evening was in conjunction with the current Kaffe Fassett exhibition and it was a brilliant evening! I was hesitant about attending at first because, to be honest, I'm pretty cheap and I didn't like the idea of forking out £12 (£13 after the booking fee!) to go to an event! As our regular readers will know we are always on the lookout for free events, it's not always because we're tight but we, like many others I'm sure, don't work in places that can constantly reimburse you for every event you choose to attend, it's just not viable. 

I made an exception for this one because I am a knitter! I was planning to visit the exhibition anyway so I figured the extra cost wasn't too bad as it included a gallery tour and two talks; one by Belinda Boaden and Wendy Baker of True Brit Knits and the other by Sandy Black. Sandy Black discussed her new book Knitting: Fashion, Industry, Craft which looks at the history of knitting from a development point of view - the images shown during the talk were interesting and it looks like a fascinating book. The wonderful ladies behind True Brit Knits talked about their background in knit and about their company True Brit Knits who aim to create knitwear patterns from a fashion point of view. They have a regular feature on their blog 'Monday Moods' which is a wonderful resource for students of beautiful mood boards - I can't wait to show my students these to get them re thinking what ought to be included in a mood board. 

It was well worth it! Both talks were really engaging and I came away feeling inspired and with a really urge to knit (which I do regularly anyway but I feel inspired about creating some new stuff!). The only slight downside was that due to the large turnout they didn't conduct a formal tour, but the museum staff were on hand if you did have any questions. The exhibition itself is wonderful. The amount of colour and pattern on display all at once is incredible - I'm not sure my photographs do it justice so if you can get along to visit it, do! They even had the first cardigan Kaffe Fassett ever knitted on display! It was a truly wonderful exhibition. 

The exhibition is on till June 29th and it's £8 entrance (£5.50 concessions), don't be caught out like I have been before though, the museum is shut on Sundays and Mondays. I really do recommend the teachers evenings if it's for a designer or technique your passionate about! The next teachers evening is in conjunction with the upcoming Zandra Rhodes exhibition. Zandra Rhodes founded the Fashion and Textiles Museum and the exhibition is celebrating her work and the fact that the museum is celebrating it's 10th year! The talk sounds cool as you get special access to the design studio and archive and their going to be discussing how the digital archive can be used with schools/colleges. You can book tickets, HERE. 

- Claire ❤

lesson idea: photographic collages

It's been a while since we've done a post so I thought I would share a recent photographic collage lesson from one of my A Level Photography classes. It was an enjoyable lesson to teach and the students all got high results from the various techniques and even recorded their creative process into stop animations!

With only 4 college weeks to go until my students exam (how quick does time go!) I needed to find a new photographic technique that would push their practice. I don't know about you but I find when your over the halfway point of projects some students have a tendency to want to 'stick' to one idea. I needed to break away from this quickly and the following activities did just that!

  

To start the lesson I gave each student a found photograph and told them they had 5 minutes to rip up the image into any shape or size. Once they had destroyed the original image they were then instructed to throw all pieces of the torn photograph into the air and let them land on the paper provided in front of them. All pieces of the photograph were to be glued in their 'fixed' state and upon completion all students were posed with the question 'What have you just made?' Luckily, all my students recognised that they had just made a collage but more importantly the starter activity really got my students thinking (whilst making) which resulted in strong, relevant discussions!

I then did a quick demonstration of each three activities above and placed the students into groups. Our lessons are an hour and a half each so I was fortunate to split each activity into a rotation of twenty minutes which in terms of timing was spot on for each task! The whole point of the lesson was to get students to see their photographs in a different light and I found 20 minutes enabled students to create an experimental outcome that let them just create and not worry about why they were doing it. At the end of each 20 minutes we stopped, looked at work and discussed briefly processes that were working well and what could the next group do differently to improve that task. Whilst each task was underway each group also had an iPad and used the app iMotionHD. iMotion HD is basically a stop-motion app for any ios based system and allows you to record video which is then made into timed stop motion animations. The app is fantastic and I love how it records students development as well as allowing them to start viewing their work as moving images!

This lesson will leave each student with a minimum of 4 photographic collages and 2 animated videos which shows that all students can make a number of strong imagery quickly, whilst exploring new, innovative technology that records and documents their process! You can view some of our students recordings here or for alternate photographic collage lesson ideas The Photographers' Gallery 'Perspectives on Collage' teacher exhibition pack is fab!

Do you use iMotion HD? If so we'd love to hear from you to share different approaches to the software and see your students photographic collages!

- Kirsty ❤

CPD in London

As often as possible we like to rush up to London after work to attend the range of education based events for teachers at various galleries and museums, you can see our write ups of events we've attended, here. There's everything from CPD and INSET sessions, to workshops, curator tours, preview evenings and invites to private views, a particular favourite of ours as the cost of visiting exhibitions can mount up! The other day it struck me as I was hunting for some new things to attend that I have to look through each gallery site individually then navigate through their websites to find the education/teachers section, not always an easy feat! Wouldn't it be handy if there was a list somewhere that linked to all the specific pages? So here it is! Our run through of teacher events in and around London! We've got a mixture of free and paid events, we're always on the hunt for the free ones but if your department can spare the ££ why not get on some of the exciting paid courses out there! 

The Photographers Gallery

The photographers gallery is brilliant! It's worth getting on their mailing list as they send out monthly emails with links to various resources as well as information about upcoming events and workshops. I recently attended a INSET workshop session there (blog post HERE!) and we all make a habit of attending the private views for new exhibitions, it's always a great crowd, good talks, resources and a nice selection of free drinks! A nice chance for a semi-work based evening out with colleagues.

National Gallery
Offer paid inset sessions and it's worth signing up for the mailing list as every time there's a new exhibit they post out a teachers private view invite. They're normally for 2 people so if there's a few of you in your team you might want to all sign up! They also do free tours for trainee teachers, check the website for updates! Also they aren't teaching focused but they do some interesting events every Friday from musical performances to guided tours as part of the Friday Lates programme.

National Portrait Gallery
They have a good range of free events categorised by level. You can find details about the primary ones HERE and the secondary ones HERE. They do some really good twilight and day sessions, if you don't mind giving up a Saturday, which are free and practical, like life drawing and oil painting later this year, we're attending both!

Fashion and Textiles Museum
If you've got the ££ they do some interesting short courses aimed at students (I think) but if you need to brush up or your a beginner on illustrator and similar programmes they could be worth your while! They also do teachers evenings each time there's a new exhibition but again they're not free unfortunately. We've not been to any before but I'm gonna go and check out the upcoming 'Future of Knitwear' evening in April, I'll put a post up all about it after the event!

Saatchi Gallery 

They have a great schools programme and a good range of online resources for teachers. They also do teachers evenings - a chance to discuss work, go to talks, etc! They update details for the evenings, here. 

Tate 

They do some good free private views for the main exhibitions which can include talks, workshops and free resources so well worth a visit if you can make it! Although occasionally these are paid events, but it's much cheaper than it would be for a full priced ticket and it normally includes a drink! They also do a range of paid courses, again we've never been but if your departments got the budget, why not! I've only had positive experiences with any Tate organised days/evenings I've been to so I've no doubt they would be engaging! Portfolio Advice Day is an annual event which I would recommend to any year 13 teachers - you can take your students along too! I've posted about it previously! 

Whitechapel Gallery

Whitechapel have an interesting programme, which is a shame for all of us outside of Tower Hamlets as their CPD is only available to teachers in that area. They do offer some other stuff to us outsiders though! There's a pilot scheme running this year for Artist/Teacher co-mentoring, education open evenings and the famous first Thursdays - not teacher focused but a great chance to see some great art, events etc in the East end! 

Royal Academy 

Offer paid workshops and free tickets to private views - there's a max of 4 per institute! There's normally a curator talk and a chance to grab some resources, posters and extra info about the exhibition! 

V&A

They do a few different paid options, tailored INSET sessions and also the V&A Sanctuary, you can find out them here. There's also they Friday late's on the last Friday of each month (except December!) which are a great chance to see life performances, fashion, debates, one off displays and installations, special guests, workshops, DJS, late night exhibition opening and there's a bar and food too! 

We hope you've found the list useful and if you've got any other suggestions that we've missed out drop us an email or leave a comment below!

- Claire ❤

Lesson ideas: AS Exam Theme 'Covert and Obscured'

We've already posted about our A2 exam theme resources and linked to the brilliant ones others have created but let's not forget AS! Above is the video intro we used for AS Graphics which outlines the briefs we're setting and the artists/designers we'd suggest researching for it. Below are some additional resources from a range of fabulous people that we've found online... 

Photography
our resources - pinterest board
Art2day
Sir John Lawes photography (has AS and A2 themed posts)

Graphic Communication
our resources - pinterest board

Fine Art
Saatchi Gallery - General schools section and PDF for the theme
Art2day
Slide Show via TES

Textiles
our resources - pinterest board 
our resources - paper dress lesson idea 
Slide show via TES

You can click through to view all our AS exam 2013 posts, HERE and A2 exam 2013 posts, HERE.  We're on Edexcel so that's what we've resourced for but there's a lot of stuff out there for AQA and OCR too and Art2day and Saatchi are great places to start looking!
- Claire  ❤

Lesson ideas: A2 Exam Theme 'Inside, Outside, In between'

I love this time of year! For me the exam theme is exciting it's the only time you have a really restricted time period in which to create resources and the key thing that can take a while to decide on, the theme, is decided for you by the powers that be! We deliver A Level Graphic Communication, Textiles, Photography and Fine Art between us so we've got a few resources together to share and we've been hunting around online too to find the best stuff that's out there. For Graphics I love a video intro, I've posted about them before, they are really easy to put together. I created mine straight from the powerpoint I'd already put together by exporting the slides as .jpeg files then placing them into iMovie, adding a bit of music and then you've got something to give the intro a bit of a pop (and a slide for students to pour over and digest a bit slower in their own time!). It also give a quick overview to how we've interpreted the themes and the artists/designers we're looking at in graphics. What I like about the exam unit is that the further you get through it the more resources you can find so I've put together a quick set of links to what I think is the most exciting stuff out there online being shared! Keep checking back to this post as we'll add to it each time we find something new... 

Photography 

Our resources - pinterest board 

Art2day

Sir John Lawes photography (has AS and A2 themed posts)

Graphic Communication

Our resources - pinterest board

Fine Art 
Saatchi Gallery - General schools section and PDF for the theme

Art2day

Exam Preparation Powerpoints (AS and A2) via TES 

Textiles 

Our resources - pinterest board

You can click through to view all our AS exam 2013 posts, HERE and A2 exam 2013 posts, HERE.  We're on Edexcel so that's what we've resourced for but there's a lot of stuff out there for AQA and OCR too and Art2day and Saatchi are great places to start looking!

- Claire  ❤

3W: Pierre Debusschere

who: Pierre Debusschere

what: photography, video and animated gif

why: we're currently delivering an animation project to our students and are constantly coming across more and more artists who are revlountionising the use of animated gifs to create stunning moving images.  We're overwhelmed with the incredible beauty of these by Pierre Debusschere. He specialises in photography and video in the fashion industry and his portfolio is a delight to view. 

Pierre Debusschere // tumblr // dazed digital feature

lesson idea: paper dress

The last few weeks have been crammed full of inspiring activities in my A Level lessons to get my students hooked and engaged with their new project - the exam unit! On Monday I set my AS Textiles students the challenge of creating a paper dress. The exam theme is 'Covert and Obscured' and my students been researching the work of fashion designers and artists who use recycled materials to create garments and accessories, often creating pieces so beautiful that the recycled materials used are almost unrecognisable. To begin the lesson we looked at the work of designer Gary Harvey alongside the 'Junk Fashion Show' put together by fashion students from Krakow's school of Art and Fashion design.  

I then gave the students a pile of newspapers and they looked to origami, simple folding techniques and experimenting with heat transfer onto paper to create a series of small experiments individually. We stopped intermittently to discuss processes that were working well and began planning what could be created to construct the dress. The students then worked together to dress the mannequin using staples and tape to hold the experiments together. I think the finished result is beautiful and it showed them that an artistic fashion piece can be made quickly and with limited materials, whilst encouraging them to explore the maximum potential of those materials! 

I love that there is plenty of scope to use this approach to add deeper meaning in a range of different directions depending on your choice of contextual link. You could look back to the 1960s when the paper dress was a desirable disposable fashion pieces, discuss pieces that make a social comment like Gary Harvey's or look at contemporary fashion which uses orgami as inspiration, blogger Ajurette Maga has put together a wonderful two part blog post with a brilliant collection of designers (part 1 and part 2) for this! 

As always let us know if you have a go at this after reading or get in touch and share if you've done a similar project!

- Claire ❤

digital: Vine

Are you on Vine? It's the latest social networking app and so far we're loving it. Vine allows you to share short video clips - just 6 seconds to capture exciting moments. We've only just started using it (our first post was our video at The Photographers Gallery INSET) but I can see the potential - quick captures of displays, student work, tutorials - a chance to give a more 3D glimmer into what we get up to in the classroom. If you want to follow us our username is: iheartteachingart

- Claire ❤

Review: INSET at The Photographers Gallery

Last Thursday I was fortunate enough to be able to attend an INSET workshop at The Photographers Gallery. The two-hour session was a workshop led session with designer/illustrator Karen Lacroix in response to their current exhibition Perspectives on Collage. The session aim was to introduce us to methods that would allow us to bring collage to the classroom. The session began with Karen Lacroix introducing her own incredible work and talking us through the different collage processes she uses within her own practise. We then moved on to creating our own work using the 'publication as process' technique (you can see my piece in the video below!). As if this wasn't inspiring enough Karen had also put together an additional worksheet with a range of different collage techniques to be tried - I won't go into detail but keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks as I'll be trying these with my own students and will be posting the results! As well as the workshop we were also given a wonderful, albeit brief, tour of the exhibits led by staff which took us through the key pieces in the exhibit, particularly those which related to the work we'd just been creating. If you get the chance to attend an INSET workshop at The Photographers Gallery I would jump at it! It was a brilliant event and I left feeling exciting and inspired about the prospects of using collage in the classroom!
- Claire ❤

Merry Christmas!

Seasons Greetings! We know we have been a little quiet with our posts this December, is it just us or does the Autumn term always seem the longest and the most shattering towards the end? Perhaps its all that cold weather! Anyway we'd just like to take the chance to wish our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We'll be back fresh in the new year so see you in 2013! 

- Claire, Jessica & Kirsty ❤