WW1 Museum Project
Role: Exhibition Designer
What were the conflicts affecting people during WW1? Term: Spring 2014 No. Teachers: 3 (+ADP) No. Students: 75 Year: 8 (12-13yo) What was the brief? Students were asked to play the role of artists and commissioned to contribute to a museum installation about WW1 within a designated area within the school. What was the situation? Our project coincided with the centenary of World War I so it was the starting point for developing the project. The key objective was for students to produce an exhibition about the conflicts affecting people during World War 1 that culminated in an exhibition private view. They were introduced to the events of WW1 through the story ‘War Game’ by Michael Foreman, which describes the real-life journey of a group of young men from Suffolk from village life to the front line. This was a reference throughout the project prompting students to learn about the causes and consequences of WW1 and identify the personal, social and political conflicts that were associated with it. They also learnt about the role of an exhibition designer/artist, demonstrating their knowledge within the context of their final exhibition. In this project, I acted as he curator and designed the layout which involved the spaces being divided up into distinct zones to represent a journey that the visitors to the final exhibition would pass through: Zone A represented the build up to the war and events that triggered it; Zone B was about exploring the propaganda and patriotic/jingoistic motivations for people to sign up and fight for a cause; Zone C focused on trench life; Zone D was the front line and No-Man's Land; whilst Zone E focused on the consequences of the war. At the beginning of the project, we invited a professional exhibition designer, Stuart Umbo, to explain the considerations and ingredients of a successful exhibition within a museum context. All students were then given an introduction to WW1 and asked to explore a particular person affected by the war linked to a zone. They started by drawing an A3 graphite drawing that become part of a display. In addition, they needed to write a first person poem or letter as if that person. They were then given the choice of choosing a specific zone and taking on an artist role making a choice from the following: illustrator, sculptor, set designer, digital media artist and performer. Within their chosen role, they needed to produce an outcome responding to one of the zone's that they had been allocated. The final presentation of the project involved visitors, including members of the local territorial army and the local mayor coming along and taking a guided tour through the exhibition in which exhibits and performances took place at different points. All students were involved in the exhibition either as guides or presenters. What were the outcomes? - Graphite portrait of a person affected by the war - Personal written response to that person - Artwork responding to allocated zone - Presentation of 'Story of Learning' to visitors What were the learning objectives? - Investigating the long term and short term causes and consequences of World War 1 - Understanding the impact of World War 1 on people’s personal lives and the culture of the time through exploring real life stories, the arts and literature - Demonstrating an understanding of the role of an exhibition designer/maker and working to a brief and specification - Presenting to an audience and demonstrating the four oracy strands: physical, emotional, cognitive and physical What did I learn? In many ways, this project was the first formal pilot of a REAL (Rigorous, Engaging, Authentic, Learning) project as defined by the Innovation Unit, an organisation keen to see project-based learning (PBL) developed as a practice across schools. It was useful to have the recommendations of a research body that had clearly observed practice in the UK and abroad. Having taught many art projects in the past, I was very familiar with the creative process of developing ideas, critique and working towards a product and exhibition. However, it was exciting to contextualise the project within a specific subject area and draw influence from events that the students have explored in more detail - in this case through their humanities studies around WW1. This project took place in the second year of the school and was a collaboration between myself, an art & design teacher, an artist-in-residence and two other teachers of humanities. We planned the project with the agreement that we would all teach the design/making process in the second half of the term when the students responded personally to their respective zones. We took specific groups of students linked to one or more of the artist roles they chose. As the person with most experience running projects, it largely came to me to coordinate the project and this led to an increased workload on top of teaching that I was not prepared for. Many of the complexities of team teaching is down to managing team member roles and responsibilities, which are harder to divide up if no agreed structure/protocols exist. In some ways, this project was the pilot project so it was bound to be messy. In addition, I was keen for students to develop outcomes that were highly personal, but this involved constant tutorials and trouble shooting since their ideas and the art techniques they wanted to use were varied. I am used to working in this way with GCSE and A-Level students but not necessarily with this age group and 75 students! This, in turn, put stress on the other teachers as they were expected to be just as responsive. I think it is important to note that few academic teachers will have had experience of teaching projects or the creative process formally in their teaching career. Therefore when teachers of practical subjects like art and design, drama, dance and music develop projects with academic subject teachers, there needs to be a clearer delegation of roles and responsibilities rather than assumption that everyone is responsible for everything. The danger with a flat, shared teaching structure for all stages of a project is that teachers don't play to their strengths and can feel redundant at times and students don't always get the best learning experience. There is an argument for separating projects from subject specialisms and for them to be multidisciplinary with their own curriculum and taught by any combination of teachers. I like the idea of working with professional roles as a starting point and using that as the stimulus for examining how those roles impact on the community and to explore how students might assume a similar role in their community. Written in July 2004 |
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