TKI - Visual Arts - Portobello

Projects with artists – advantages and challenges

The Portobello Doll Project proved to be so successful that the 'Projects with Artists' concept has continued.

During 2003, the students in the College's art classes worked with artist Glenn Smith on 'Project Plasticine' – a sculpture/photography project working with figures in three-dimensional landscape.

Advantages

Many advantages are gained from developing art programmes that include artists:

Children have first-hand experience of talking to an artist, observing their work, and working with them.
The artist becomes a role model when children see an adult making and responding to art as they do.
Students can find out how artists gather ideas, and what technical processes they use to make things.
Older students can see art as a valid career path. They can ask an artist about their life as an artist, how they got to be one, and what it was like.
Links are established between a school and its wider community. Adults in the community, as well as the children in a school, see the related artwork as important, as a treasure of which they can be proud. The artwork becomes the focus of lots of talk between children of different ages, and between children and adults.
Artists can bring a different point of view and range of skills and knowledge to the classroom – teachers as well as children learn from this type of professional collaboration.
Artists can be inspired by the work of the children – Nicola Jackson developed some of the colour combinations for the torso of Portobello after noticing and commenting on the colour combinations in a six-year-old's painting.

Challenges

There are challenges to be met when setting up an 'artist in schools' programme:

The project must follow a negotiated pathway – the artist and the teacher must have distinct and complementary roles within the delivery of the programme. The artist is the expert when it comes to art and their artwork, and the teacher is the expert when it comes to pedagogy. The success of this working relationship is crucial to the success of the programme.
It is advantageous if the artist has had some experience of teaching or working with large groups of people, or is a person with strong communication skills.
The artist should not be expected to control and manage the students - the experience has to be a positive for everyone!
The time span has to be clearly thought through, whether the artist is engaged as a guest speaker or actually working alongside children on a longer programme.
Funding is a serious issue – the artist must be paid, and there will be costs for materials. All of the costs for the Portobello I project were met by Creative New Zealand and Te Papa. For the 2003 project, funding came from the Dunedin College of Education's budget. For their projects with arts, the College pays the artist a teaching wage for the hours spent, either teaching or preparing, or working on artwork. To continue this artist scheme in 2004, future funding is being sought from outside the institution.
The success of any project will depend upon the good will and enthusiasm of a project leader. Hours of work need to go into contacting, negotiating, and planning for a successful programme, and to seek out funding.

Artists in Schools programme

Kerry unreservedly recommends that schools engage artists from their community to take part in their visual arts programmes.

She hopes her story of the Portobello Doll Project will inspire teachers to dream up their own projects to enrich their visual arts programmes and their students' learning.

To find out more about the Artists in Schools programme in general, go to www.artistsinschool.ac.nz. For protocols about engaging artists to work in schools, go to http://www.artistsinschools.ac.nz/html/support.php.