The Media Workshop worked in collaboration with the NSPCC, Bitterne Police Station, Southampton Women’s Aid and Poet Philip Wells to help young people from Chamberlayne Park School and Weston Park Junior School create a book of poems concerning community safety. The young people participated in several workshops looking at staying safe both on the streets and in the home.

The Media Workshop helped the young people photograph places in the area where they felt unsafe to accompany the final poems.

We also ran art and design workshops to support them in designing the final poetry book.

The initial idea was to create a mural or large display panel based around the community and the local urban environment. The Media Workshop were to work with a Year 4 Group and the children would complete a digital and textile based work for semi-permanent display.

Issues we considered were:
Cultural and Religious Diversity
Similarities between people
Environmental impact of the urban community

Workshop 1. Religions, Cultures and People.
This workshop began the thought processes - how people are linked through their cultures and religions and how that feeds into the local environment. We also examined how people from different cultures are similar - what all people share.

Exercise 1.
Thinking about the hobbies, interests and lifestyle of individuals pictured in a series of photographs. This was completed through group discussion.

Exercise 2.
In pairs the children created hand drawings using varied skin tone pencils with writing to describe the differences and similarities between the children. These formed a border for the finished display.

Workshop 2.
People living in the community.

(Session led by teacher Gordon Blackhurst.)
Gordon showed a computer presentation of websites which showed different ways people live and how those impact on the environment. The presentation also showed possible future power sources and the children used this presentation as a basis for group discussion.

We discussed the following issues:

What would the children want their future community to be like - perhaps when they are adults.

What facilities and buildings would the children like in their community?

What would be the environmental impact of the buildings and facilities they propose?

What building would the children like to create for their community?

The children then began to draw their buildings, bearing in mind all the issues raised over the two sessions. The children created a sketch and concept of a potential building for the children’s future community. This carried on during class time throughout the week and also during a further session with Caroline. The children were asked not to colour the images so that they could do so on the computer at a later date.

Workshop 3.
Creating the Environment.
Session led by CR.

During the intervening time Caroline scanned all the pictures for the children so that they could then colour their images on the computers.

In small groups Caroline helped the children to use computers to colour the images they had sketched. This involved an initial demonstration of examples of the way the children could colour the buildings, followed by time for many of the children to create further images of environmental additions and street furniture, e.g. future modes of transport, postboxes or the future equivalent, trees, parks, ponds etc.

This work was continued over four sessions.

Workshop 4
Textile work in the Classroom.
Sessions led by CR.

The children’s pictures were printed onto a canvas type material and given back to them. They then decorated and embroidered their work. For many of the children this was one of their first experiences of sewing and although all children were asked to complete at least some stitching, some found it easier to use collage techniques.

This took several sessions to complete and the children also worked on their textiles during the week.

Finishing at the Media Workshop. The digital images were collated together and where necessary finished and tidied by CR. They were then slotted into a digital mural which was printed out and the embroidery added to complete the display.

Evaluation of the Picture This - Southampton in the Future Project.
Input: The initial idea had been partly formed by the teacher in that he wanted to create a view of the city and it was in partnership with The Media Workshop that the idea for the mural was finalised. The idea of using the computers and textiles to do the work was something which had not been considered before. The Media Workshop had not worked on a project with such a heavy bias on embroidery and collage techniques.

The Media Workshop was able to bring Adobe software specific to creative projects for the schools work with.

Conclusion
The school was able to use additional software and creative input as extra resources through this project. Using computers as a creative tool was a new experience for many of the children.

The Media Workshop was able to experiment with more textile-based work .

Because the school was willing to allow plenty of time for the sessions to take place it meant that a thought-provoking and fascinating project could take place, with a good quality end result.

Doing and Showing

Problems and challenges during the course of the project.

Problem Identified: Lack of Time for the project:
Initially the amount of time to be needed was difficult to approximate.

It was really because of the flexibility of the school in allowing time to be spent on the project where needed, the resulting work was of a high standard and quality.

Problem Identified:
The children were full of ideas for their buildings and it was sometimes very difficult to include these ideas in their visual work. We decided to allow some text on the pictures and in fact this gave the children the additional skill of learning how to use text in graphics software as well as through word processing software.

This Project was funded by

The concept behind this project was to create a series of T-Shirts with children and young people across the city which celebrated Black History and Culture.   We chose three themes for the project, split between schools projects and more informal projects in two adventure playgrounds.

The Anansi Stories.   These folk stories effectively trace the journey of many Black people from Africa to the Caribbean and then on to Britain because they have been told by people as they made those journeys.   We used a CD Rom created by Black Heritage Over 55’s group to tell the story of Anansi and the Old Higue, inspiring the children to create a t-shirt design which told the story in a single picture.

African Decoration.   We also asked to the children to decorate the edges of their pictures with designs inspired by African Decoration. We used various artefacts to show the children designs, some loaned by inter cultural services, some by   SASA African Cultural group. We broke down the designs into various geometric elements so that the children could create their own rather than copy.

Black Inventors.   This project was put together with help from staff at Newtown Adventure Playground.   The children were given information about various Black inventors and their inventions.   They were then asked to fill in a template which said ‘Without…………we wouldn’t have…………..’ stressing that without many Black people various products, from curling tongs to the post box, would not have been invented and/or developed.   These finished designs were then printed onto a t-shirt.

Approximately 321 children took part in the project

MW helped students from the Unit for the to make a poster depicting a typical day in the life for a pupil at the school. It was designed with the particular purpose of helping and offering reassurance to new students joining the Unit. The young people used story boards to decide the most important aspects of the school day. Students re-enacted scenarios and took photographs around the school with digital cameras.

The final poster was created by students putting the images into a comic strip format on the computer and adding captions to best describe their experience of being a student at the school.