WORKSHOP FORMAT

This particular project was conducted over twelve two hour sessions. Each year group was allocated two sessions on consecutive days. By not allowing more than 24 hours to lapse between sessions, what was learnt on the first day was still fresh in the children's mind and time did not need to be spent on recapitulating the previous day's activity and findings.

At all age groups the children were focused and engaged throughout the two hours. There was very little need to keep individuals occupied as the activities are designed to stretch and challenge at all levels of ability.

In fact even the youngest pupils were able to do without a break other than a brief hiatus for the toilet. In the two cases where a 15 minute break was given the children took longer to settle down. Obviously each group will have different requirements, however, the painting activity did engage pupils to the extent where a break became a distruption rather than a rest. This would not be normally advocated, however, by working continually during the two hours children were able to achieve maximum benefit from the input given are were ableto immerse themselves in the painting without distraction.

The activities were sufficiently flexible to allow the few pupils who finished quickly to engage in their work at another level of complexity helping them understand the branching nature of what they were doing as opposed to having a determined end point in mind beyond which they could not pass.

Each year group was essentially offered the same format of activities. The idea being that as the age of a group rose, ideas that would have been dwelled on for longer in earlier groups were more quickly assimilated enabling the progression to more complex considerations. In short all the children did the same thing except with more or less complex input. This approach makes it possible to seamlessly move from one age group to another without necessary changes in format thereby facilitating reinforcement and habituation to basic processes which access the child to a better understanding of painting regardless of psychology, subject or ability.

Generally each group workshop was divided in two. The first session dedicated to the introduction of basic colour mixing progressing to a particular aspect of colour usage. The second day was dedicated to painting a complete work using what had been learnt previously with new input to generate a composition emobodying certain principles of colour theory yet maintaining individual freedom.

At no time was colour theory explained as such. To do so would have rendered the sessions sterile and prescriptive. Rather the concepts were applied empirically without explicit reference to them, however, enabling the process to be one of directed self discovery and learning by doing.

For this reason the language used is of great importance as many misconceptions are formed early on which can persist for an entire lifetime leading to frustration and a lack of belief in the individual's creative potential with respect to painting.

© alexis rago 2008