Appendix 3
De La Warr Pavilion – Education & Learning Programme Report
April - June 2008
Highlights:
- Exhibitions:
- Unpopular Culture curated by Grayson Perry
- The Not Knowing of Another by Kate Adams
- Schools/Colleges:
- Princes Foundation for Children and the Arts / BexhillHigh School
- Working Our Way 2
- Young People, Children & Families:
- Courses for young people – Film, Circus
- Lift the Lid
- Youth Forum
- Adult courses
- Creative Writing
- Modern British Art
- Paul Hamlyn Foundation programme
- Action Learning Set
- ARC professional development for artists
Exhibitions:
Unpopular Culture and The Not Knowing of Another continued our year of accessible, popular exhibitions that also challenged and engaged audiences. We had independent visits from secondary schools who hadn’t engaged with the Pavilion before and a high level of engagement from primary school through our project work.
For our Interactive Interpretation this season we worked with poet Steve Tasane, who used creative writing to encourage audiences to engage with the work. This reflected the use of poetry by Grayson Perry in the UnpopularCulture catalogue, and included poetry readings in the gallery as part of the exhibition tours. Steve created a magazine format, The Everyday, that members of the public contributed to through activities that encouraged responses to the exhibitions.
Exhibition tours were led by Eastbourne based artist Judith Alder.
In Context talk - The second in a series of talks by Art Historian Dr Graham Whitham, discussed the social, cultural and political context influencing the work selected by Grayson Perry for the Unpopular Culture exhibition.
Both Kate Adams and Grayson Perry gave talks as part of our public programme, with Grayson Perry attracting an unprecedented audience of 259.
Schools/Colleges:
Two of our key schools projects that run throughout the academic year, took inspiration from the season’s exhibitions.
Our partnership with Bexhill High School Year 7, funded by the Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts, continued working with artist and maker Stephen Wood with a follow up session back in the school. 167 students visited the exhibitions and we were impressed by the degree to which they engaged with the art work, particularly the sculpture.
Our major primary development programme, Working Our Way 2, also continued with five schools doing their Pavilion visit during the season. It started to emerge strongly that the Pavilion provides a site of ‘multiple inspirations’ for school visits with groups engaging not only with the exhibitions, but with the building itself, its story, history and environment. The midpoint review meeting for teachers and artists was a valuable CPD day to reflect on the project so far, and was led by artist/educator Michaela Ross.
Children and Young People:
Our new after school Film Club for 13-19 year olds continued, concluding with a two day film school out on location around the local area. A high quality 20 minute short film was produced that had been devised, written, shot and acted by the group.
We held two successful series of Circus workshops, attracting over 90 new and previous participants.
We continued to develop our Youth Forum project with Bexhill Young People’s Services and Bexhill Youth Council, aiming to engage young people in a discussion around issues that are important to them as individuals and as part of the local community.
Families:
Our regular Lift the Lid sessions also engaged with the ideas and themes of the exhibition, with 110 people participating in our monthly drop in sessions.
Adult Education:
Our second creative writing course was fully booked and shows the interest in this area of work.
We also ran a successful short course on Modern British Art run by Dr Graham Whitham, that linked not only to Unpopular Culture, but to the Martins exhibition previously and the forthcoming Ben Nicholson show.
Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded programme:
Our Inspire, Create, Innovate programme continued, with the launch of a new CPD pilot project for artists, teachers and gallery educators. Action Learning Sets are an innovative form of personal and professional development that brings together professional for different but related disciplines to share experiences and learn from each other.
Other news:
Planning got underway for the next phase of our Young Curators Programme. We will be running a second project starting in the autumn, extending the partnership to involve HastingsCollege and all the secondary schools in Rother, alongside our pilot project partners BexhillCollege, BexhillHigh School and St Richards College.
De La Warr Pavilion – Education & Learning Programme Report
July – September 2008
Highlights:
- Exhibitions:
- Nathan Coley
- Schools/Colleges:
- Place & Space project
- Working Our Way 2 exhibition
- Bexhill High Yr 7 exhibition
- DLWP supported projects
- Young People, Children & Families:
- Summer courses for young people
- Big Spin
- Lift the Lid
- Rother Children’s Centre Summer Programme
Exhibitions:
Our summer show was inherently interactive with people encouraged to walk on, around and through the large scale sculpture Palace.
Our own interactive activities were devised and led by artist Kenton Lowe and took place at different locations around the building on a mobile trolley. The most popular activity was a simple opportunity for people to respond to the same question posed by the artist in one of the works to a group of Bexhill estate agents – What do you think happens to you when you die?
Exhibition tours were led by artist John Gilhooly and were very discursive, encouraging people to give their own impressions of the work.
In Context talk – we had to cancel the talk this season due to low take up, which indicates, as we have found in the past, that audiences for talks in the summer season are more unpredictable than other times of the year.
Nathan Coley gave a public talk at the end of the season which saw lively discussion and debate about the work.
Schools/Colleges:
Two of our key schools projects came to an end this quarter, both producing fantastic exhibitions in the Pavilion’s Studio.
274 people came to see the work of Bexhill High Yr 7 students in July, showing the results of workshops with artist Stephen Wood. The aim of the project was to encourage experimentation and work with new materials which came across strongly in the exhibition.
Over 700 people visited the WOW2 exhibition in September, the culmination of our year long partnership involving all of Bexhill’s eight primary schools. The exhibition aimed to show the process that the pupils had gone through as well as the final pieces of work that had been created. Very positive feedback was received for both exhibitions, and the Studio proved a perfect environment to show the work. A full project report will be available soon.
The Nathan Coley exhibition provided the inspiration for a new outreach project for Architecture Week, funded by Arts Council England, delivered in partnership with WillingdonCommunitySchool. Workshops were delivered at eight rural primary schools in Rother and Wealden by artist Lisa Barnard, exploring themes of Place and Space. One of the aims of the project was to forge new relationships between the Pavilion and rural schools.
Alongside our own project work, the Pavilion’s education programme also supports a number of projects through donating space, time and resources. We supported two projects this quarter,
- 100 Kids/100 Questions: facilitated by Scapegoat Schools working with a number of secondary schools in Rother and Hastings. The project looked at young people’s responses to 100 questions about key cultural, social and political questions, and interpreted them through visual art, film and theatre. The Pavilion hosted the final event for young people, parents, friends and the general public who were able to visit the exhibition of work.
- Rother Special News: facilitated by Sound Architects working with BexhillHigh School and RobertsbridgeCommunity College. Various historical events related to the area were reinterpreted through the medium of film. Students’ film were shown on the big screen in our auditorium in an event attended by over 200 people.
Children and Young People:
Our Summer Courses were all fully subscribed with young people engaged in film making, circus and visual arts. These strands now form a strong core of our provision for young people.
Big Spin returned for its fourth year and again attracted hundreds of riders and watchers for a day of skateboarding and BMX. Sponsors Monster Energy also brought their stunt bike team with their ‘Ball of Steel’ to amaze audiences.
Families:
Our regular Lift the Lid sessions ran weekly during August attracting almost 300 participants over the season.
Our artists were also out and about around the parks of Bexhill as part of the Rother Children’s Centres summer programme, which is always a valuable outreach opportunity, which connected in with our bank holiday celebrations.