Extra-curricular mess-making

I run after school art clubs at my local school. Its my bread and butter work and it provides me with rich opportunities to try out ideas and share them with children. I like it because the children are always so enthusiastic. Its also hard work because the children come to the club tired and hungry after a long day at school and this can affect concentration.

I recently asked for their feedback about the club, I encouraged them to be honest and that I didn’t mind them saying negative things if that’s how they felt. The feedback has helped me refine what I do and I'm grateful for what the feedback has show me. Basically they all enjoy the club, however when I asked them what skills they had learnt, they didn’t know what ‘skills’ meant. I had to explain what it meant in relation to art club. I explained that confidently cutting with scissors, understanding which different adhesives work best with different materials, how to use different mediums are all skills I use as an artist. To be honest, these are things we do every week but it seems working through a project isn’t enough for them to make confident connections yet, so I know where my work is now. Its hard because they don’t like it when I use maths to explain things like proportion. They audibly groan and say ‘No not maths!’. I explain that maths is used in art making, but I think they are just fatigued with it.

I wanted to connect art making with wellbeing and I asked them to identify how art club supports that, they all felt accepted and inspired which made me happy. I just need to make some more adjustments so the kids can understand that these feeling come from artistic practice and if we do this regularly we will have those feelings too.

Drawing kitchen utensils is one for the list, I just hope they remember saying this.