Creativity in Art

Reproduced from The Primary Network, published by The Schools Network, January 2012

The ambition and the scale of the project are what made it so special.

On the 3 October 2011, Robin Hood Primary School in Leeds took part in the drawing event, The Big Draw. This event is a nationally recognised event, organised by The Campaign for Drawing. It promotes the importance of drawing in both educational and arts settings and highlights the enjoyment that can be derived from engaging in powerful and purposeful drawing activities.
The aim of the event at school was to immerse the children in drawing activities which served a range of purposes, from skills based outcomes to more free and exploratory activities. We wanted to show the children that drawing forms an enormously important part of our curriculum and that drawing activities extend far beyond the idea of a simple pencil on paper technique. Most importantly we wanted the children to be excited and energised by being creative. We began the day, with a whole school assembly, which was lead by the Deputy Head and Arts Team Leader, Gaynor Dale. The children were asked to take off their shoes as they entered the hall, which was lined from wall to wall with heavy duty white lining paper. This added to the excitement and suspense of what the day would bring. The children were informed about the format of the day and were encouraged to see themselves as real artists that were about to be part of an amazing and dynamic drawing day.
As the children returned to their classrooms, they began engaging in their structured class drawing activities and members of staff began to set up the hall for action! Each class was able to spend time in the hall across the course of the day to add their own unique piece of drawing to the lining paper. There was a huge range of drawing materials available and there were no rules in terms of what they drew or where they drew it. The children showed how imaginative they are by displaying a massive range of drawing techniques from drawing round each other, to creating collaborative flowers, to experimenting with lines and shape to simply ‘see what happened’!
Meanwhile back in class, every key phase had a different drawing focus, from which they would produce two high quality outcomes. These class drawing activities were specifically designed to promote various age appropriate drawing skills and engage the children with unusual and authentic drawing experiences. The results were truly magnificent, from foundation stage’s bear drawings and key stage 1’s autumn themed creations, right the way through to key stage 2’s architecture drawings and portrait based Manga representations.
Once the day was over, it was time for the staff to get to work in the hall and go about displaying the art work, so that it would give the strongest visual impact possible. The climbing frames were brought out, display sheets were hung up on the walls and washing lines stretched out from wall to wall. These display spaces gave us the chance to group the art work into themes whilst providing us with a powerful and almost 3d aspect to our display. Once all of this was collated and hung up, the hall was totally transformed into an artistic space, so powerful it left grownups and children quite speechless.
The children were given the opportunity to interact with their work on display before
the community event, which took place the next day, after school. Parents, friends and colleagues were invited to visit our display and make a nominal donation to ‘buy’ their child’s work, to encourage the children to feel as though what they had produced was valuable and for a real purpose. The feedback from the event was incredibly positive with one parent being overheard saying ‘It’s better than the Hepworth, this!’ It doesn’t get much better than that!