Constructing a collective city skyline...
The students, the guarding horse, and the tree house
Just last week I've completed a series of workshops with the year5 students at Sebright School in Hackney, the project, Journeys and Transformations: hybrids of tales, focused on domestic architecture in relation to the culturally diverse backgrounds of the students.
Students were encouraged to investigate different architectural characteristics of their families’ countries of origin, through collecting stories from family members, and constructing a drawing based on those descriptions. Later, they constructed maps of top views of their domestic spaces, using drawing, collage and text as a tool of analysis. The students explored a cultural object/artifact of their choice from that space, traced the story of that object and the context in which it is used.
Based on their little journeys of discoveries, each student developed their object using scrap and second hand materials, which at a later stage they joined together to construct a collective imaginary space/object.
Throughout this project, the students were encouraged to articulate, in creative expression what constitutes a sense of place and belonging. The project also encouraged them to decide what shape and form their work will take, allowing a margin of deviation at certain points of the project.
The One and Other project is funded by A New Direction
