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"Art+" offers selected Key Stage 3 pupils the opportunity
to participate in regular workshop sessions. Using practising
artists, these sessions give pupils challenging and ambitious
opportunities to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding
in activities beyond the scope of timetabled lessons or
the department's other extra-curricular activities.
In the first session the artist Andy Parsons led the group
in creating large sculptures out of found materials in Epping
Forest, the resulting pieces being recorded in pastel and
charcoal. It was always the intention of the scheme to use
practising artists; the benefits to pupils of this type
of working relationship has been documented in journals
such as iJADE, published by the National Society for Education
in Art and Design.
Less well known are the benefits that artists can derive
from creative contact with young people. Parson's response
to the sculpture workshop included the following justification:
'The students' responses to the ideas behind the workshop
reassured me of the validity of the imagery I have been
developing over the last few years, after all there are
few more critical constituents on which to test one's ideas
about art. The students seemed quite at ease with the idea
that the meaning behind a piece of work need not be fixed,
and were quite able to see a bunch of sticks as complex
forms or as symbols in a narrative.'
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