Last Thursday we launched this year’s Arts Award with a 'Shine' project, taking the word shine and exploring what it means, how it makes you feel, what does it make you think…..so the pupils made a collaborative film of moving images, photographs and sounds using this one word.
Using various disciplines, visual arts, creative writing, drama and media the pupils produced some work being inspired by and exploring what ‘Shine’ meant to them, recording it with photographs, audio recordings, videos or in writing. At the end of the day they invited the rest of the teaching and office staff to come and share in their creative findings with a showcase of “Shine in The Green Room”
There are several meanings of the word ‘Shine’, from a definition in the dictionary to street slang, it can be positive or negative and make you feel good or bad. With this in mind the pupils worked on the following projects:
Drama
They devised a character using each definition of shine and filmed a short piece on each character.
Creative writing
Taking inspiration from National Poetry day, they took each of the definitions of shine and composed words, for example, a poem or rap which were then laid on top of the visual art and can be seen in the final film.
Visual arts
Pupils experimented with the art of light drawing and mark making with torches and glow sticks, and even created their own glow bottles to use. They learnt how to use slow shutter camera speeds to record their lights and made them into art.
Media
The pupils filmed the whole project, going to each group and recording the discoveries being made and the creative process. They set up the iMovie app ready to import all the images, and found some inspiring music that could be used that represents our ‘shine’ theme.
At the end of the day all pupils had to write up what they had learned from the day and what they could do next with that learning, this was then displayed in the drama studio, and the pupils watched the film they had made during Circle Time.
Click here to see a photo gallery of the day and some of the work produced, and see the final video below
Achieving an Arts Award says a lot about a young person: that they are committed, independent, interested in developing new skills and willing to take on challenges