Created by Joanne Davies
What was the school trying to achieve?
The teaching mentor and other colleagues value the opportunity to learn from new students who are talented specialists with recent experience of the creative industries. Trainees are actively encouraged to develop their own Schemes of Work and to resource and plan projects themselves, take risks and learn from their mistakes. Students on the current PGCE Course have benefited from the tutor’s role as a Regional Subject Adviser for the new National Curriculum and have had opportunities to develop work in line with the new statement of importance for Art and Design.
In this case, the trainee took the opportunity to re-invent the somewhat clichéd ‘African mask project’. She started to develop a project inspired by the recent visits to the British Museum and October Gallery as part of the PGCE course, that would use her skills as a theatre and film set designer. She believed that pupils would be engaged by referring to the work of contemporary African artists and liberated by using found materials and methods of construction that used power tools and inspired by a focus on their own identity and a wider cultural awareness. The key concepts of the new National Curriculum in Art and Design addressed are Cultural Understanding and Critical Understanding.
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