Creative and innovative practice

Spent really exciting evening at a GCE, GCSE art exhibition at Chalfonts Community College. Above there is part of a students contextual study, all printed on cans which was a brilliant idea. The whole thing is set in an abstracted display cabinet (it relates to Pop Art). There was some excellent painting with real sensitivity and maturity in the use of the oil paint and some really excellent drawing and illustration and some very clever digital art installations.

The digital art work was particularly interesting as the school has pioneered a GCSE course in digital media (under the unendorsed art and design GCSE specification). There are now students at AS level with three years experience of digital work having completed the two year GCSE digital art course in KS4. You can get a sense of the work being done by looking at Ben's video blog on YouTube. It is genuinely intriguing and revealing. The video blog shows how the ideas developed, some of Bens references and the final animations (these were shown projected onto a very large gauze screen in a dark environment with loud music so the YouTube version is just an approximation of the actual installation). What is perhaps more important is that it demonstrates a genuine partnership between Ben and his teachers as Ben is encouraged to take risks and experiment with a medium and grammar which is demonstrably his own, rather than that of the school. So Ben is taking ownership of his own independent practice encouraged and supported by his teachers - it can only happen with trust on both sides.

As Stephen Heppell has said "all this has been changed by the ability of modern computers to allow expression in a wide variety of media: speech, sound and aural ambience, text as labels or prose, symbols, animation, music, video, diagrams and more. And all this can be individual or collaborative, in public or private, at school or (for many but not all) at home. Obviously this broadens the corridors through which learners might evidence their success", Stephen Heppell

The evidence of trust was evident in many other students' work as well. digital animations dealt with intensely moving and personal themes which could only have come about in an atmosphere of mutual respect between students and students, and between students and their teachers. In a sense it reminded me of the way that good drama is always predicated on genuine trust within the group which allows personal expression to be shared and celebrated. It is almost always a characteristic of work which is most exciting - where students are able to use their art to explore issues and ideas of personal significance to themselves and their lives.

As a postscript I have just posted a first video to YouTube. It is a short film made in partnership with the school about an introductory visit to Sweden to develop ideas for working with the artist and designer Andie Cowie. We intended to use the Chalfonts Community College VLE to explore the option of having an artist/designer from another country contribute to the VLE based course.