Textiles

Earlier in the year we were presented with the question : 

What artistic practice do we value and how would we teach art effectively in the primary classroom?

Personally I think that this is a very important question to ask yourself as an art teacher and professional. This is because good art teaching (be it primary, secondary or beyond) is not about just looking at practices you feel may be fun or create a good end result, but also about what the children will learn through the process of creating. 

We then looked at how children learn and created mind maps to illustrate this

After thinking about these things we were asked to create a collaborative textile piece based on yourself and university life. The groups came up with such a range of ideas and there weren't two ideas the same. My group decided to each create a shopping bag using a batik technique that represented us, and in the foreground have the Plymouth skyline to bring it together and make it collaborative. Here are some pictures :) 

Jenny's shopping bag

 

We included a common luggage lag or label to put or names into so that it felt personal to us.

Chantelle's shopping bag

My shopping bag

As you can see we all went about it differently, but together they work as they have a common theme (Plymouth and shopping!). They are also all on the same piece of material.

With children this kind of project could focus on the different techniques that you can use when working on textile pieces such as batik, colour theory, appliqué and different kinds of surface pattern. Have fun with it though!