Sunday 1 September 2013

Unit 2 - arts project leadership

Project report



Outcome
In total 40 children created some wonderfully imaginative masks. Each child was working on their mask for 30-60 minutes. As each child completed his or her mask another child would take the available space. All of the children were extremely well behaved and thoroughly engrossed in what they were doing. All of the masks were unique with the exception of two yellow chick masks produced by two children sitting next to each other. I was surprised that this did not happen more often but the children on the whole showed that they had great imaginations.




Feedback from participants
As the children were mostly 5-6 years old I had to keep the questions that I asked them brief, simple and easy to understand. Most of the children would not stand still long enough to answer the questions and ran off to play with their new masks. I asked a few of the children several questions:

1) What did you like most about this workshop?
I liked that there was a theme so that I didn't have to think of something to make.
I like the feathers.
I liked being able to make an animal in any colour I wanted.

2) What did you like least?
The fact that I had to use human shaped masks.
I had too much choice. I would prefer to be told to make a particular animal – perhaps a choice of two different animals.
I wanted to use scissors to cut my mask into a different shape.

3) What could have been done differently?
To be given a choice of animals rather than any animal would have made it easier for me to choose.
I wanted to make a horse mask but didn't have the right equipment to change the shape on the mask.
I needed more space to work. I think there were too many kids working at one time.

4) What other equipment would you have liked to have available?
Sequins, glitter, drinking straws, scissors.

How could I improve this workshop
I could have used a larger work space or have fewer children working at one time. Six children at a time would mean I could pay more attention to each child's needs. I found that I was running around from child to child rather than spending more time with each child in order to give encouragement and advice.
I had a helper to supervise the children but I needed at least one more helper, although there were not any around at the time. With only six children participating this would not have been a problem.
I think I coped well with the children. They were quite demanding but happy and the fact that they were engrossed meant that they behaved well.
I was intending that the masks would be worn for the end of play scheme party but the children took the masks home and did not bring them back today. I should have kept the masks at the work space and handed them out at the party.










4 comments:

  1. Your project seems to have gone really well Demi, it is quite a challenging age to work with, especially for a volunteer like youreslf who hasn't been doing it for very long. The fact that you planned your activity so well ment that you were very prepared and that helped everything to run smoothly. Based on your feed back and reflection I can see that you reached the conclusion that a smaller group would have been better, I agree I think that a smaller groupsize would have allowed you more time with each participant and enabled you to help each of them develop their ideas.
    However you coped really well with the larger group size and the results were very good. The young people enjoyed the activity and were happy with their creations and that is afterall the main objective. As creative practioners we will always think that workshops could have gone better, and think of ways to improve activities for next time, that is what helps us to develop and to improve the activities that we provide. So that is an important and valuable lesson to learn. I think that a development for this activity would be the ability to change the shape of the masks using tape, scissors, paper mache, or maybe mod rock, but I can see that you had constraints due to the amount of young people wanting to take part and that a more onvolved craft would have taken longer, but maybe it might be a development for next time.

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  2. Unit 2 part D - manage a public showing of work.
    I can see from part of your report Demi, that all of the children took their creations home, and that you had planned to show all of their work at the final party. So we need to find another way for you to share this work. You have taken some lovely photographs of many of the masks that were made, so perhaps you could write a short introduction about the event and present the photographs instead, you could use powerpoint maybe and add it here to your blog or you could upload it to Arts Award Voice website then you will have shown the finished work and be able to gain feedback, have a think you may well have a better idea to share your work instead.

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  3. Finally Unit 2 part E - review the project
    You have included feedback from the children and you have included some personal reflection too, would it be possible for to get any feedback from the group leader at the summer play scheme or from your helper on the day it would be nice to hear their feedback too.

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  4. Not only is this a challenging age group for you to work with but some of the children that you were working with started at the play scheme only a couple of weeks earlier and were at the start not capable of behaving well or sticking to the rules. Your workshop must have engrossed them thoroughly as their behaviour was impeccable while they were making their masks!

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