The Final Outcome!

I have learned a great deal on this project and can safely say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working in a group with my colleagues on my course, and the pupils at Upton. The girls had a very relaxing and imaginative time working with us and us with them. The results were very unique and pleasing! Bringing our work into the outdoors was challenging but effective as you can see in the photos. The pieces connect to the natural world in the materials, yet contrast with the beading and colours.

Upton Hall School Exhibition

Scale Models for the Final Piece

Here are a couple of shots of what the walkway will hopefully look like when its finished!! ... I've made little scale models using carboard, beads of old necklaces and, ofcourse, the handy hot glue gun! I'd be lost without it! Hopefully you can get some sort of idea from it!

Upton Workshops

During my workshop at the school I was hoping to get the students to make their own rosary beads using different materials such as wire, wool, clay threads, even using clusters of beads threaded together to make a bigger bead! The students could use their own inspiration and imagination as to what their beads would look like! The workshops went very well... I assisted antonia in her felt making workshop which was very enjoyable and the students produced colourful, eye catching pieces! When it was time for my workshop the foolowing day, the students and I felt that they would rather decorate their felt pieces by sowing beads into the felt instead of making separate beads... This worked really well! the pieces looked lovely and when we hung them up in the grounds of 'Rosary Walk' outside, they really stood out from the nature of the walkway.

The Workshops!!

Fun Fun!!

The Workshops went very well with only a few minor hicks, one of the workshops a few of the girls couldn't attend due to a talk elsewhere and my workshop was to make beads withe the girls, but due to timing we ended up sewing and stitching the beads onto the felt pieces... which worked out even better in my opinion!!

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist living in Scotland.

He produces land art situated in natural and urban settings.

He uses unique natural materials and his work is very relevant to my current group project.


Some of Andy's pieces include the use of stones, leaves and twigs.

It would be interestng if we could collate some found materials with the children and create some form of natural sculptures with what they found.

We would also need to encorporate Upton Halls history into the project aswell.

History of Upton Hall

Upton Hall School is a catholic all girls grammar school located in Upton Wirral.

Getting an idea of the history is important for our project as we need to understand about the schools Ethos and how it has developed into the school it is today.

The school came into being in October 1849 when twelve FCJ Sisters and 24 pupils moved from a boarding school in the centre of Liverpool - Great George Square - to Lingdale House in Birkenhead.

The curriculum was designed to produce accomplished young ladies.
Languages were very important and native speakers taught French, English, Italian and German. Other subjects included music, dancing, drawing geography, history, botany, writing and arithmetic.


The present site was bought in 1862, the FCJ Society taking possession of the building on 8 December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, celebrated as the School Feastday ever since.
The school grew steadily and, over the past 10 years, a series of building programmes has provided outstanding facilities. Pupils enjoy a beautiful campus with excellent sporting facilities, leisure space and a peace garden..

The school is designated a Technology College, Language College and Training School. It is also an International School, a Fair Trade School and a Health Promoting School. We are accredited for Gold Artsmark, Sportsmark, Investors in People and Financial Management Standard for Schools.
We want to include some of these elements from the schools history into our project so we can make our piece site specific to the school.

Here are some of the photographs that we took of the space we are looking at;

Our next step was to email Ms. spears.

It was good talking to her and she was happy for us to come to upton and have a discussion with her about our project.

Upton Hall School

Exhibition Proposal notes


When first planning what kind of an exhibition we wanted to do we decided that we wanted to create some of our own work relating to the project but we also felt it would be interesting to share this project with the community, and give others the chance to help decide the direction of our project, and final outcome.

An idea we had was to get students of different ages involved in creating and displaying there own ideas.

We decided the best way to do this was by running a series of workshops with students from Upton Hall School, and encouraging them to explore different ways of expressing the chosen topic.

Themes:

We wanted to chose a theme that the students we would be working with engage with understand and relate to, but that also has also has enough scope that they can interoperate it in their own, different ways.

We thought about themes relating to ‘place’, we could ask them to think about where they live, their city, or a place they have been too, or even a site specific piece, which would then involve and interact with the place it was displayed. We saw how well this idea can work in a piece by Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan and Alfredo Juan Aquilizan called ‘Passage’ which was shown in the Tate during this years Biennial. In the piece they asked people from Liverpool to create boats out of cardboard boxes, which they then displayed though out their gallery space.

We are very interested in creating a piece for Upton Hall School grounds. The grounds surround the school and consist of a long walk-way where the children can get in touch with the outdoors.

It will be interesting to get a different point of view of the subject from the students; we can then collate the pieces and chose what will be appropriate for the exhibition.

During this process it will be important for us to stay in contact with the school, getting information about what they want, and listening to the students ideas, and being involved in workshops with the students would be a good way to do this.

Upton Hall School Project

Currently I am working on a project with two of my friends on my course, Antonia Clarke and Amy Dabbs. The project incorporates studio practice with the demands of publication defined as presentation of work in a public context. Essentially the module is about beginning to consider how you place your work in a public context. It also asks you to consider how the context of the work, or where it is placed effects its meaning and how it is perceived. I have decided I wouyld work best in a group for this project as I am a team player and often find that other people's involvement and ideas really influence, challenge and inspire me to think more freely.
When we first put our heads together for ideas we knew that we wanted to create work in relation to the prject, but we also felt it would be more interesting to get others in on the project too. After discussion we decided to make the project into a community project, giving others the chance to help and direct the process of the project in different directions.

All we needed was to select and approach a target group/ audience... We thought a young audience would be suitable candidates and so we started to think about schools and everything kind of fell into place after this...

We were very fortunate to find that Upton Hall School jumped at the chance to let us work with them. Antonia previously attended the school so she knew mostly all the teacher's and how things were run and so she, in a way, was our gatekeeper.

We soon decided that the best plan of action was to run workshops in the school and Ms. Spears, after bringing us in for a chat, let us work with some of the students.

We wanted to choose a theme that the students could really get stuck into and explore in a variety of different ways. The theme of 'Place' came to mind, we could ask them to think about where they live, their town/ city, or their favourite place, a site specific place. This idea has worked well for many artists, including Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan and Alfredo Jaar in their piece 'Passage', exhibited in the Tate for 2010's Biennial. An exquisite peice, they asked the people of Liverpool to create boats from cardboard boxes and displayed them throughout their gallery space.

In visiting the School to talk with Ms. Spears we immediately spotted a walkway surrounding the School and this became our 'Place'. After the talk with Ms. Spears we took a walk round it. It spans the whole way round the school (which is very big) and this gave us even more ideas to progress with.

We just really cant wait to get moving and actually started working on the project... Itchy feet!!
We look forward to getting the different views and perspectives from the students, we were very excited at Ms.Spears' enthusiasm with the ideas we put to her so far and it will be important to stay in touch with her as much as possible over the next coming months. She had her own ideas of what she wanted us to incorporate into the project (ie. the Religious background of the school) so we will now try to develop the project and get things off to a visual start, perhaps make a few sketches or even a scale model.