Inspiration

When I was teaching in my last post, because it was a very small unit with only three teachers and twenty students, we all had to teach subjects other than our first one. So, as well as teaching English, I had to teach Citizenship and History… despite that there were still odd slots on the timetable and the three of us ended up teaching all sorts of other things, just to fill the day. I have always loved art, and as a child I painted and drew a lot, but it didn’t really prepare me for actually teaching art!

Because our students were quite ‘challenging’ teaching was often quite unconventional and we had to approach work from completely different angles. Most of our students despite their bravado severely lacked confidence. We looked at Paul Nash’s work, particularly his black and white stuff, we looked at ripping pictures up and making mosaics from totally random scraps of photos, and I discovered an amazing artist called Michael Cano. I wrote to him and asked if he would mind if I used his work with the students, and not only did he agree but he also agreed to help – and considering he lives in the states and we live in Weston-super-Mare in England that was amazing! The students wrote to him, sharing their work and asking his advice and he wrote back which was just brilliant… and the work he inspired from them was brilliant too.

One lad took this photo of a colleague…