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Posted on October 11th 2022
Peckham Festival And The Artist In Residence
We are now in our third artist in residence programme, run in collaboration with the Centre for Creative Explorations (CCE).
This year we have been fortunate to work with Anouk Verviers, who has been developing her project Au Milieu Des Bureaux Empilés (In Between Desks). This is an extensive project through which Anouk creates conversational spaces for students to exchange their experiences and rethink the education system.
Since the beginning of the project, more than a hundred students from 13 secondary schools in Canada, Switzerland and the UK have taken part. Meeting weekly with students, each conversation starts with everyone listening to a few excepts recorded in other schools and countries. With these foreign words becoming a starting point for the exchanges, students from different communities build together an ever-growing archive of interlacing ideas that cross borders and oceans.
This same process happened at HGAED, with Anouk working with students from all key stages. Once the conversation had been triggered, the students at HGAED then followed a pattern of listening to recordings of their previous weeks' conversation whilst drawing an abstract representation of the exchanges that took place.
Each student developing their own drawing protocol according to what aspect of dialogue was most significant to them: listening, speaking, silences, laughter etc. The drawings then supported the students in becoming more attentive to the group, thinking about how to create a system-based inequality and respect, and a collective sense of care. And so the conversations developed.
At the Peckham Festival
An initial sharing of this project was exhibited as part of the Peckham Festival over the weekend of 17th September. The drawings from the students of HGAED and Anouk were displayed on a wooden structure which reproduced the architecture of the room where they met each week.
Visitors to the exhibition were invited to sit and contemplate the students' work whilst listening to their conversations on headphones, gaining insights into their understandings and frustrations of the educational systems we all have to work and collaborate within.
This will culminate towards the end of the term when we will be hosted by the South London Gallery, who will show the exhibition and give an opportunity for the students involved to share their experiences and opinions around the issues that have been raised during the project. If you would like to attend this event, please send an email to Clare Stanhope (c.stanhope@harrisdulwichgirls.org.uk), to register your interest.
Creative research
The other aspect of taking the work from the residency out into the community is to further support the aims of the Centre for Creative Explorations (CCE), which is to provide creative research opportunities for our young people.
Each year the Year 13 students collaborate with the artist in residence and develop their own creative research practice. This year the workshops were wide ranging, covering:
- global warming and the Eurocentric media viewpoint (Rabtha)
- manipulation of media imagery in film (Saffron and Xinyi)
- the politics of hair (Christina)
- celebrating different viewpoints (Noa)
- heteronormative fashion ideas (Yen and Princess)
- and the built environment (Michael).
The interesting ideas gained from developing these workshops with the community is then taken back to the classroom to feed into the student’s personal projects. The experience of working with an artist, putting on a show and delivering workshops in public space help us to support our young people to become critical and creative thinkers, with skills and knowledge that they can take out into the world but most importantly they develop skills in speaking up and speaking out, crucial skills if we want to support them in being able to critically engage with the world around them.
Ms Stanhope
Check out the Centre for Creative Exploration website (https://centreforcreativeexplorations.weebly.com/) for previous artist in residencies and to explore the other exciting projects that take place.
Some of the work created by students as part of the project.
