The Art of Change – What, How and Should We? – Day 2

During day 2 of our Half Term Course – The Art of Change, our game based on decisions and consequences really started to take shape.

Artist Sarah Carne took the children on a 2-day adventure into conceptual art with a political twist. Click the link to Day 1 to see how the course began.

After designing the game board itself and having lots of discussions about decisions and consequences it was time to think more about the questions we were asking. In an argument there are always two extremes, but a lot of nuances to a good debate. We played some more games to think about the grey areas in the middle.

Children had to position themselves on a sliding scale of where they stood on certain issues that they chose themselves – from, if they enjoyed school, to which colours they liked, whether children should be allowed to do whatever they like and whether technology was a good or bad thing!!

They had to explain why they had chosen to stand where they did. This helped us to devise the questions we would ask for our board game. We were encouraging children to think about the big and small ideas that affected their lives.

We then drew up a list of all the jobs we needed to do to make our game happen – we began to divide them up – A big collaborative project needs good team work.

We had been alternating big thinking activities with making ones to help the children understand that really good conceptual art has a strong idea behind it.

Now it was time to get down to making some snakes!

We thought about bold designs, colours and patterns.

We sketched out ideas then realised them through cutting card and paper.

We worked together as a team to make the larger snakes.

There was an atmosphere of busy, purposeful collaboration.

We ended up with a lovely array of designs of different shapes and sizes.

It was then back to those big questions. We learnt how to devise a decision tree, to make sure our questions worked. The idea was to ask our parents questions about the things that meant a lot to us. We had to see how the decisions we made had various consequences and put ourselves in other peoples shoes to see which decisions were good ones.

Time for more making!

We then had to piece our board together!

Some of us were in charge of sorting the numbers and making sure they went in the correct order for a game board.

Some of us were in charge of giant dice. We had to google where the numbers were positioned on a cube.

We had to remind ourselves what a net for a cube looked like, piece it together and fold it up – a little bit of maths!

Very satisfying when it worked!

Meanwhile the game board team were still puzzling over making sure the numbers stayed in the right order as we flipped them backwards and forwards…it’s not as easy as it looks!!!

We had to make speech bubbles so that our snakes could speak and ask our all important questions.

We had to negotiate a giant thunderstorm and move all our work inside….Just in the nick of time!

The board was ready – time to turn it over and make sure we had got it right!

Nearly!!!!! Can you spot the deliberate mistake! 

In the move from outside some of the numbers got a bit muddled – we were running out of time – but hey! It’s Art – anything goes….right????

We positioned the snakes and questions and we were ready to play!

Every time you landed on a snake – you were asked a question. The player gave an answer and had to justify that answer.

Children then decided how far up or down the snake you were allowed to travel based on the quality of your answer!

It was very exciting to see the game working!

We invited our parents to play!

We wished we had had more time to play and iron out all the little glitches.

We had made a really good piece of Art. It involved some serious thinking, and planning, some great making and the sharing of skills and ideas. We used lots of different materials and touched on many different disciplines and subjects. It helped us think about things from different perspectives, it looked GREAT – and most importantly – we hope it changed our minds about a few things! Isn’t that the importance of art after all!

We also had lots of FUN!

I would like to pass on a huge thank you to Sarah for devising this piece of work that had so many layers and twists and turns.

If you are interested in the kind of work we have been exploring and how art can make a difference in society, Sarah is currently showing a piece of work work at Tate Modern.

You are Welcome is a participatory event devised by artist Sarah Carne at Tate Modern that is asking people to consider how can art make a difference to people’s lives and society. In a collective gathering of evidence people are being invited to share a story from a time in their life when art made a difference and contribute their ideas and experiences to a growing display. Stories can be drawn, written, contributed to a sound wall, mapped on the world and voted about on a twenty foot wall. They can also be contributed online a

 http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/tate-exchange

Closing on Sunday 11th June this weekend is the final opportunity to add your stories.

You are Welcome

Tate Exchange, Level 5, Tate Modern

Thursday – Sunday 12.00 – 18.00 runs until 11th June.

#TateExchange