Workshop 1 - 09/05/2011

I went to Wyke Regis Junior School today for the first time today. I was really nervous to start with as this was what the whole project has been about and I was worried that the children would not like my ideas or they would be uncooperative. Luckily my school is really enthusiastic about the project and the whole of year 5 had been given a presentation that morning telling them about Moving Tides and my design, The Kraken. 

When I arrived at the school I got a quick tour and started setting up everything I was going to need. I first set up the dye vats and me and the teacher I am working with this week, Hannah started cutting up loads of string ready for the children.

I made sure I took along gloves, mask and health and safety forms so we could do the dying as safely as possible. The children were not aloud to put anything in the dye but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

We started the lesson off going through my sketchbook and I showed them tentacle samples, which we were going to be doing that day. The children were so enthusiastic, giving me ideas of how I could make the costumes, most of which were obviously impossible but it was great to see they were excited about the project and were thinking about it in a creative way. 

We started the practical session by tying string on all the tentacles ready to tie dye.I told the children to put 3 to 5 ties on each tentacle or collar. Some of the children found this quite difficult as it needed to be tied really tight! But we told them to bring it to either me or Hannah to check it was tight enough to go into the dye.

With the dye I was using the materials needed to soaked in soda ash first so I put this with water in 2 buckets at the front of the class which the children could put there tentacles in when they had finished. The children seemed to really enjoy doing this as I put a plastic ruler in them so they could poke the tentacles down. 

After this we took small groups of the children out to the dye vats so they could see how we would do it, even though they were not aloud to touch the dyes. 

I think my first workshop went really well considering how nervous I was. Unfortunately we did not manage to get the full 160 tentacles tied but they will be taken and finished at art club. I think I might have been a bit ambitious thinking that we would be able to get all the tentacles and the 20 collars tie dyed in one day as some of the kids were not as quick or as bothered as the others about doing it. For example one child managed to do 14, were as another child only did 2. I will take this into consideration for the next lesson and try and plan my time accordingly but it seems to me know matter how much you plan, things are always going to run abit late or there will be something that will go wrong. However I know this now and will not let it stress me out in future sessions.