Brainstorming Our Idea

Our next step was to narrow down our focus and settle on a direction.  Our wonderful and motivated students came out during non-instructional hours to work with Jasmine on the brainstorming process.  Myself, Ms Miller and Ms Salbuvik were also present to help facilitate discussion and to provide things like paper and felts, a laptop and projector.  We teachers were mindful not to intrude too much in the brainstorming as we all agreed the process should come from what the students want to do and not be shaped with our visions in mind.  Jasmine quickly reviewed each strategy from her presentation and then each student was asked to pick their top three strategies and answer the following questions:

1                  What do you like best about this approach?

2                  How do you see this approach working at Hugh McRoberts?

3                  What does this approach make you think about?

               (food, an object, a person, a sound?)

Students were then asked to collate and discuss their answers in groups.  Each group then presented to the whole and thus the discussion got rolling.  What impressed us was the depth and quality of responses - our students dug deep to think this through.   Here are some of the responses to various strategies:

To the notion of marking the passage of TIME in some way visually through an art piece:

-     liked that it changes (like life), ideas/information is revealed

-     could be collaborative (new students add/change art), flexible, adaptive

-     perhaps use natural elements like rainwater or wind to change over time

-     reflect seasons, could allow a visual metamorphosis

To the notion of creating an INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENT art piece:

 

-     helps to make work more interesting with student interactivity

-     creates a space for photo-op, play, eat, sit, hang out

-     multifunctional space, shelter

-     stage for presentations

-     could be playful and include water, friends, laughter, crowds

 

To the notion of using SOUND as part of the art piece:

                     -      could use school bells to mark a change in artwork

                     -      record the sound of daily activities within the school

                     -      could record the sounds of nature and have them change during seasons

         -     artwork could change over time using sound to instigate change

To the notion of using the FIGURE as the art piece:

 

                     -     "student body" represented using relocation of objects---figure made of    

                            objects that indicate aspects of school

                     -      could "look into" body and see different parts (multiple viewpoints)

                     -      different body parts made of objects that relate to the body’s function in

                             relation to school i.e. hand made of paintbrushes.

                     -      practical uses i.e. arm that holds umbrella

Jasmine then asked students to work in groups to seek out visual cues for direct inspiration as to how we might proceed.  Using school cameras, students walked around the school thinking and talking about what they saw.  Jasmine left the activity deliberately open to allow for creative ideas to come from unexpected sources.  Students chose architectural elements, areas of social hub (like the microwave), and things that students felt represented school identity like the athletic trophy cases and artwork.  Here are a few of their photographs:

From these photographs and the process of taking them, came many different ideas including using lockers as part of the artwork. We are in the process now of seeing if we can find some old lockers - even one might do that we could cast - to incorporate into the artwork.  Students had the idea of creating folding down chairs with them, or perhaps casting them to create the sides of hills as another kind of seating or even the notion of opening an outside "locker" to hear the sounds of school within it.  We had great discussion regarding the relationship between inside and outside, industrial and natural and constantly addressed the question of where is here?  We had so many ideas without enough information to make a decision (i.e. cost of sound system, question of getting a locker) that we quite simply could not narrow our project down to one idea.  Our next meeting in November is designed to finalize our project parameters.  Jasmine and we teachers are working to get all the pertinent facts to present to students.  All of us would like to thank the group of students who came out on their own time to share with us all their wonderful ideas; we were all so impressed with the depth of thinking and creativity that they brought to the table.