Previous Years
Change has brought an array of art forms into the schools of Batley and Birstall, from ceramics to poetry, glass making to textiles. Here, you can read testimonies from students and teachers of what they got up to when we combined arts and science
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Printing
With
Artist: Ruth Fettis
Cummins Engineer: Jack Turnham
Students learnt how to design and carve their first lino blocks and we printed two finished examples onto photocopied illustrations by Ernst Haeckel. The students found cutting the recycled marmoleum lino quite a challenge at first, however they are a great class and just got on with it, producing beautiful work. To make cutting the lino easier they all sat on their lino before carving, to warm it up. They worked hard and were engrossed in what they were doing throughout.
Mixed Media
With
Artist: Fiona Goodwin
Cummins Engineer: Donna Skeldon
The whole class erupts with excitement as we begin working with our vibrating drawing machines in the form of a cup, some pens, a battery, a switch, a motor and a range of hoop sizes. We’re quickly able to see the difference in motion as we adjust the weighting and balance by adding magnets to the motor shaft. This changes the direction of movement and the types of mark that are created. We note too that some papers absorb the ink differently, that some pens puncture the surface and that different base papers allow the cups to move more freely, creating less resistance.
Ceramics
With
Artist: Ammie Flexen
Cummins Engineer: Callum
Our project is about our identity and how we can work together and support each other in our communities. We are exploring this through our science topic Forces and States of Matter using clay. In our first session we heard Callum (our buddy from Cummins) talk about his experiences and his inspiring life-story. Then we tried different ways of making our mark in the clay, testing tools and types of pressing and rolling forces. We even made boot prints in the clay. We thought about our final artwork and decided that we want it to reflect things that are important to us like our families and our local area.
Glass Making
With
Artist: Jackie Harrowsmith
Cummins Engineer: Alison Stevens
In the change project, we were working with glass which can be dangerous, so we made sure that we were safe by carefully following instructions. We did something called bubble printing to collect the pattern of bubbles on paper. Next, we decorated a strip of glass to represent the patterns of the ocean. We used copper oxide and copper foil. To help us with our ideas we looked at Artist’s pictures and thought about the patterns and colours of the water. We also made embossing patterns on the foil for our fish and decorated a square piece of glass to represent all the colours and different types of fish in the ocean. When had finished, Jackie took our work to put into a kiln.
