Child Development Investigation
For my research report I want to look into the effect that creativity and play have on educating children about the world they live in. I also want to discover if play has a direct importance on how a child develops. I find that researching child development will give me a further understanding how children may respond to certain things. As an illustrator who wants to create artwork for children as a target audience, I always want my work to have an interactive element to it that children would enjoy to play and experiment with. I feel that having knowledge about what children need and want from what I could create is important for my creative practice. I feel that the contextual lens that I’ll be looking at this will be very social as I believe theories on how children should develop at a young age is a social discussion, however the context I’m going to be looking at is the impact that play and creativity have on children learning. In order to gather my research, I want to use my time over summer break wisely to collect as much information as possible. I think this time is a valuable opportunity to volunteer and engage with children themselves. Although most schools will not be open during the six-week vacation period, I’m looking into finding possible volunteer activities for young people that’ll be happening in Norwich over the summer months. One example is UEA’s Festival of Literature for Young People, I’ve already had contact with them and arranged meetings to do a book illustrating workshop on the 23rd June. I’m also willing to try and become a volunteer at Norwich Castle Museum and take part in interactive activities they may have on over the summer break. I think that by doing this I’ll be able to see first-hand how children interact with each other and use their creative skills in practice. I’m also going to make time over the summer to watch the Channel 4 documentary series ‘The Secret Life of 4, 5, and 6 Year Olds will prove to be valuable to gathering information about child behaviour and interaction amongst others. The documentary also offers is experts saying how certain actions that a child perform can explain what sort of personality they occupy and what this may develop into when they become adults. Contacting professionals at University of East Anglia is something I’m hoping to do to hear information they may know or any references they can recommend to me that I would find helpful to my research. The two departments at UEA I’d like to contact are Research on Children and Families and their School of Psychology. I’m particularly interested in how Forest and Montessori school’s curriculum differs to traditional education and if there/what are the differences on the impact on the children behaviour and personality. I know that there are two Montessori schools in Norwich. There is Little Peoples Montessori Nursery and The Norwich Montessori School Ltd. I’d like to be able to contact at least one of these schools and hear from the teachers for their opinion on why the need for different schooling technique and what it provides for the children. Depending on their schools’ policies. It’d be great if I had permission to see first-hand how they conduct their sessions and how children respond back to it. It could also be valuable to ask the parents of children as to why they chose their children to attend these particular schools instead of traditional. I know that the Little Peoples nursery is open throughout summer except one week, therefore I’ll use my summer break to attempt getting into contact with the nursery in hope to learn more about this method of teaching children. An organisation that I think will be beneficial to my research is PlayEngland who promotes freedom for children to play. They have a few journals I want to read such as A World Without Play: A Literature Review (PlayEngland 2011) which covers a broad of themes that play has an impact in, including schools, and another is The Play Return: A review of the Wider Impact of Play Initiatives (Gill 2014). This contains information about what Children’s Play Policy Forum, whom PlayEngland are a member of, are currently doing in order to promote play for children across Britain. I think these will be of value to read because it’s about what organisations are doing currently to ensure that play isn’t lost within children’s childhoods and how they go about it. I think the how is important for my practice because that’s what I’m trying to put into my own work, how to still incorporate play for children in a learning context. I also want to look into other work that Tim Gill has produced as I’ve noticed that he’s an innovator on childhood and is a founding patron for the Forest School Association that I’m interested in learning more about. There are a few books I want to read as well to understand more about creativity in education. Two books I want to read are Creativity, wisdom, and trusteeship: Exploring the role of education (eds. Craft, Gardner, Claxton 2007) and Understanding art in primary schools (Craft, Jeffrey, Leibling, 2001). I think these will provide a better understanding of how creativity itself is an element to how children learn and discover, and it’ll also teach myself how to ensure I incorporate these elements into my own practice. There are also a few articles I want to read such as Children should learn mainly through play until age of eight, says Lego (Ward 2016). A toy company, that makes money based on children playing, believes that play is how children should learn and then begin learning academically. I thought this was an interesting view to look into what companies that profit from children playing opinion on doing so. I also found an article which I find relates to myself as a creative practitioner. Why You Should Have a Child-Like Imagination (and the Research that Proves It) (Robertson 2013) which gives me a reason that looking into how children are creative is beneficial to my own practice. I’m hoping to gain at the end of my research a thorough investigation into how play benefits children when learning and discovering about the world. I believe having the knowledge about how children learn can be inputted into my practice to make it valuable for children to learn from and be interactive enough to be enjoyable. Hopefully my research will allow me to create work in 3rd year based on this thesis and test out if my research has helped develop my understanding further. Indicative Bibliography Articles
Books
Documentaries
Journals
Interviews
Reports
Websites
Timeline May
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Being confident with InDesign, I designed the layout for the publication using the manufacturing and consumerism images the group had contributed. We believed the pages either side of the spine in a spread added to our concept of the two halves of consumerism. The left hand side represents manufacturing in the factory and the right hand side represent the corporate selling within Chapelfield. We agreed for choice of paper to be Biscuit Eco as we felt it had that same grain effect that the advertisement had that we saw of the Bridewell Musuem.
We decided we needed to incorporate the ideas from the publication into the display further, by including 3D elements into it. We agreed that we could still use lino print for our display by using it for the gift that we hand out on postcard-sized leaflets with our QR code and URL on the back still. Inspired by Peter's foamboard hands, I decided to try and re-create the pages in the book with this material to try and blend the two methods together. I crafted How and Why, whilst Peter did How. We simplified our layout for the display, yet when Matthew came over spoke with us, it still wasn't quite working. There was no uniformed style yet, everything was individual. However it was recommended that we aimed to match Chloe's animation style, the general census of white with patches of colour. Anther aim was to create a more interactive and engaging table with the foam board hands. As a group we decided to incorporate our main subject, Linguistics, again and spell that out in sign language for the public to solve using the foam board hands. We knew we had set ourselves a lot to do in a short space of time, so I wrote up this plan of who was doing what and when things needed to be done in order to progress on and be ready for the following Friday.
Setting up for the final exhibit, proved that our idea from the floor up onto the wall didn't speak our concept as effectively on paper. We decided to go back to our initial ideas of how consumerism is a circle continuing, manufacturing -> branding -> profits -> manufacturing etc.. We still implemented the concept that manufacturing is the foundation for the consumerism on the Chapelfield location by having those images along the bottom of the circle, and the corporate consumerism of Chapelfield along the top, blending in together. This project gave an insight into the reality of collaborative projects on a short time scale. It was very difficult to organise all together at the same time, but we managed it in the end. I did feel that I may of taken a slight initiative approach to the project by directing people what we could do for our concept. I think because of the short time frame, I wanted to make sure we were secure for keeping onto time when researching and creating.
I re-made all three foam-board mechanisms as the previous ones weren't of the best quality and passed them to Chloe to paint so that it was in uniform to her painted animations. We also decided to put the information answering the questions about BSL onto the boards as well, following the idea of our publication further, with even the same typeface. For the nine posters that were announced needing doing, I thought it would be a good idea to re-use our lino prints as it'll match the postcards and our past efforts weren't to waste. This time, in order to uniform them to Chloe's style, I used my digital Photoshop skills and printmaking to scan in the prints and edit the colours. I think these work a lot better as digital prints edited than the white ink on top of the coloured card before because it was tying in nicely with our new colour scheme.
I signed up to this session to improve my drawing skills. I hadn't looked into perspective drawing since high school and thought I needed this session to have another chance at understanding perspective. I'm glad I attended this session because it reminded me of thing I had forgotten and taught me new about perspective as well. I really enjoyed creating the 'fish-eye' work. I felt that it made my work look more dynamic which I feel that my work lacks a lot of. With the 360 degree room drawing, it's a lot more fascinating to look at than the usual square corners I probably would had drawn if not told so. Recently I've been looking at artwork and seeing how and if they've incorporated dynamic perspectives as well to see how effective it is at creating an exciting piece of work.
Because of my confidence with using Photoshop, InDesign and printing at the design studio, I was left to work on the postcards and posters for our display at The Forum. Our colour scheme was very restricted to pastel blues, purples and pinks and so I made sure that our postcards had this same scheme as well, as well as the typeface we used in the publication and on the foam-boards. Myself, Chloe and Peter worked together on composing the poster layouts. We wanted the centre poster to have the complete alphabet no matter what because we saw that as the foundation of learning all of British sign language. We also wanted to make sure that the top row acted like a title and stated British Sign Language. We were a little unsure what to make of the last 5 posters, but we looked back through our work and Chloe remembered about the yellow sheet where we wrote 10 key words relating to our theme, and so took the most relevant words from there. I had a little worry when first looking at the designs as they reminded me a little of blackmail clippings with the scattered letters and the blackness of the motifs. I was assured by the others that they don't because of the bright coloured centre piece and the colours themselves on the letters as well. Overall we were impressed with the final display of the nine posters and thought they were satisfactory as they were. They showed our concept and we were able to use our old lino prints again in a more suitable manner.
I really enjoyed my session with Textiles Course Leader Nicholas Rodgers. I had never known of the software AVA before and found it a really useful tool with repeating and colour swaps. One of my favourite features was that you could automatically repeat a pattern to my customs, and still work into it to make it loop like I had done above with the cat and squiggles images. With the Tucan image, I learnt how I could take an image and separate all the colours I pick from the original and transfer them to layers. It gave myself a lot to play around with and develop to create these bright repeat patterns above. I thought about how I could use this software to develop digital patterns for when I create digital illustrations. Above is an old sketch and I incorporated my patterns to use for the bikini. I think this would be a really nice way to create flat digital illustrations when it comes to clothing, or maybe use it to render repeating textures that can then later be used. This is a software I hope to get the chance to use again in a future project because of how fun and adaptable I find it can be.
The feedback we received from Fiona was a big improvement from the feedback we received shortly before Easter. We'd finally created a uniformed style that worked. There was a little re-arranging that needed to be done and Jaz thought of putting the alphabet poster, laminated onto the table for people to use more effectively when completing the puzzle. After that there wasn't anything further to do until the day. We were all pleased that we had managed to successfully create a table top display for the event that was engaging, creative, playful, and raising awareness about BSL.
Today was executed very well. We occurred no problems with setting up prior to when the event begun and came across no issues with the display. Two things we noticed throughout the day that could had improved our table further was explanations about how to do our puzzle, as some people approached it confused at first but then understood shortly after with us standing by explaining our subject theme and instructing them how to complete then perform the puzzle. Secondly, although our postcards contained a digital output for our animated alphabet, we realised it would had been nice to do a set of postcard designs that had the full alphabet in lino print to take away with them. I think this was something we thought about initially but thought that on A6 it'd be difficult to see the detail of the illustrations, causing it to lose it's ability to instruct people how to perform certain letters. I didn't imagine that the majority of people that approached our table and interacted with it had many stories to tell us about people they know or worked with that are deaf, including stories about how other people overcome their own personal handicaps. I found it fascinating about how many people had a connection to our table as I, on a personal level have none alike any of these stories to share as I've never experienced it, and therefore had a limited mindset about how many people have some sort of link to being aware of sign language. Although there was many people that knew of it, very little knew how to actually perform (or "speak") British Sign Language. Everyone that took part in the activity and listening to us explain/teach more about sign language, thanked us and mentioned how important it is to be able to know at least the basics of sign language and felt like they had learnt a new skill. Being told this made me feel that our group achieved what we put out to do. We were able to raise more awareness about deaf society and british sign language, but as well teach the basics to the public who then felt proud of their new skill that can help both themselves and those that rely on signing. Overall, I really enjoyed the event, I thought all the stores had created innovate ideas that probably wouldn't had occurred without the formation of collaboration. I'm glad that priorities for the tables had to include engagement and gift as I think that led people on to develop ideas even further when thinking about appropriate resolutions for the public that still stemmed their subject theme. I had a lot of fun of trying out everyone's tables and then receiving little gifts to keep as souvenirs, because it created a vibrant atmosphere for people to get creative and play around whilst learning about each subject theme at the same time. I believe that this had made me realise more that I care about creating interactive artwork that encourages being creative and educational at the same time, which is ensuring as I know that my research report is definitely going to be effective for my practice as I come to realise that this is something I'm serious in wanting to do.
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