Community arts projects and visual arts and design workshops in schools and youth organisations that support learning, engagement and participation through creative experiences and co-created materials.
young people / special needs
#iDare youth magazine and blog project leader.
Work at Platform Project CIC with marginalised young people – autism, disability, mental health, isolation – to build confidence and work-based communication skills: writing, design and production + time management, team work. Read the article on pages 22–23 of Issue 17 for a project overview.
Tyler, featured on the cover and pages 8–9, gained confidence to secure a placement with Swindon Link magazine
community art / event management
The Big Draw – Swindon Style event at Swindon Designer Outlet
Self-initiated community drawing activity with expert workshop delivered by children's book illustrator, Fred Blunt. Working with Jo Beal. Gained funding and in-kind support. Organised volunteer facilitators, media coverage and documentary photography; participants’ feedback mechanism for report. I created event branding and publicity (print/online).
KS1 cross-curricular art and SEAL workshops
Day of the Dead workshop
Self-initiated cross-curricular workshops. They offer children who've lost close family or friends space to talk about their feelings around death, grief and bereavement. Children could also choose a celebrity hero who had passed. Contrasts Mexico’s celebration of lost souls with western scary Hallowe’en tradition. I wrote the workshop after a month's volunteer work as an arts workshop facilitator in Puebla, Mexico
Ella talked about her grandad who had recently died. Her design included the things he had enjoyed such as the pub and birdwatching
Participatory documentary photo projects celebrating the utter, marvellous mundanity of ordinary lives
More detailKS1 cross-curricular art and Spanish workshops
International exchange project: Who am I / Quein soy?
Art & language learning project devised to meet KS1 global citizenship and inter-cultural understanding learning objectives. Children described themselves on bi-lingual worksheets, swapped information with their overseas counterpart then made an engineered puppet following their partner’s descriptions.
Students in Swindon and Puebla shared photos of the puppets they've made of one another
Artwork, photos and videos exchanged. I devised this project after working at Fundacîon Juconi (Mexico). Delivered at Sevenfields Primary School (Swindon).
Puppets were created from the student descriptions written as a language-learning task
Encouraging Sevenfields' students to introduce themselves to Juconi in Spanish
KS2 design workshop / brand design
Isambard Community School logo design
10 days’ school logo design workshops with my Year 6 ‘design team’ ahead of their move to the brand new school. The final logo design was inspired by their design concepts, incorporating multiple elements.
“We’re really pleased with the way Kate distilled all the ideas put to her into a strong, clearly understood identity for Isambard. Students who did not attend the workshops could read the references to Brunel’s engineering excellence, and the sense that Isambard will give them the road to success and the way to reach for the stars.” From a press article with Head Teacher, Rachael Mattey
The logo design team. This project led to 3+ years’ work with Isambard: I led weekly extra-curricular drawing sessions and was KS2 Art teacher and Design & Technology teacher (part-time, unqualified, one year)
KS1 / heritage / community art
Swindon Mechanics' Institute murals
Partnered artist Tim Caroll and two primary schools to design and paint a mural triptych. I presented history and photo reference to the children to inspire drawings, then used their drawings to create two murals to compliment Tim's central artwork. Part of the Swindon Heritage Action Zone project.
community art
The Little Hop pop-up art gallery
Self-initiated pandemic lockdown project using a closed business as kerbside viewing gallery. Social media call out to local artists to exhibit – 26 artists exhibited 65 works.
Opportunity for locked-down, local artists to exhibit/sell their work; something for the locked-down community; raise the pub’s community profile. Feature in the local paper.
Also See:
Design work for the Little Hop in Creative miscellany and insights