This is synonymous to Professor Graham Donaldson’s ‘Successful Futures: A New Curriculum reform for Wales’, from which the AoLE: Expressive Arts was referenced to inform many aspects of my delivery through the discipline of printmaking. Much foresight and thought went into the mechanism of this project that would allow the process to flow with an autotelic principle as a desired outcome. I was of the mindset that ‘the less I do the more they do’ which allowed for learner experimentation with the media and materials.

 

In my role as facilitator to the learner experience, liaisons between staff of both schools was paramount. This allowed for pre-workshop consultation where the best perceived outcome could be generated within the allotted timeframe. This would help each school develop part of its own education programme, drawing on guidance and resources to decide what specific experiences, knowledge and skills will support enablement of their learners to develop towards the four purposes of the curriculum whilst adhering to multiple progression stages within the AoLE of the art curriculum.

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During my tenure as the City and County of Swansea Artist-In-Residence for schools (1995-2015) I advocated and actioned the vinculum of schools working with each other. This project has drawn from that advocacy experience to place into practice those elements contiguous with my consultation input role for GSR Welsh Government for the New Curriculum and Lead Creative Schools initiative.

 

As a corollary of working between the two schools I was able to devise a working environment that allowed over 120 Year 5 pupils to fully engage in all aspects of the drawing and printmaking process. During the residency sessions all learners explored the work of émigré artist Josef Herman, each having the opportunity to work in his style through mixed media. Selected output from the learners can be viewed in this website page and stands as testament of the young artists endeavours and creative collaboration between the schools.

 

As part of my ongoing work for Tate Britain’s school outreach education programme, I was able to access copies of Josef Herman’s original archived work from which pupils observed these rare images that captured his time spent in Ystradgynlais and the Swansea Valley, each documenting the shifting identity of the industrial landscape of the time.

 

The legacy of my residency with the children is a pair of permanent archival solander boxes I have designed for presentation to each school. These will serve as a complete record of our collaboration and include the following:

 

• Artist statement

• Pen and ink-wash drawings

• Letterpress method prints

• Ink illustrations direct from the print plate surface

• Sketch drawings (charcoal, graphite, ink & pencil)

• Sketchbook 

• Photographic evidence of 3D clay tiles

• Cards depicting each selections of each process of development.

• Handmade bound book of prints

• Handmade bound book of pen and ink-wash drawings

• Complete digital archive to accompany the Mining Josef Herman website

• Images selected for the permanent Tate Gallery Schools Education Archive

 

Selections from these presentation sets are featured in an exclusive exhibition curated by Morphic Creations Arts Education Service at The National Waterfront Museum in Swansea titled Mining Josef Herman. The exhibition comprises of 40 individual framed images from the residency on loan to the Education Rooms before an eventual return for permanent display at each respective school.

 

The creative substratum of the learner experience has been firmly entrenched in this pioneering collaboration and will be of interest and value to other artist practitioners and exponents of creativity, learning and education parallel to constituting a useful reference to teachers and education policy makers.