‘Not the sort of pictures I’d expect to see in a gallery like this’

As part of BAS9 (British Art Show 9) ‘being in the city’, partner venues have been working with a team of Manchester based art teachers – MATC (Manchester Art Teacher’s Collective). Teachers from the collective were invited to a planning day led by creative practitioners to co produce a series of workshops that aimed to engage their pupils with themes and ideas that BAS9 stimulated.

This blog post is written by Johnny Woodhams who worked alongside Burnage High School and Manchester Secondary Pupil Referral Unit.

Some might argue that there is no such thing as an ideal day to take a group of 14 year old boys (and a lone girl) around an art gallery (and I say this having parented two children through that tension and angst fuelled teenage period when a natural physical shutdown begins to take place). But make that day a hot, final Friday of the week and for most, a first ever visit to such a venue, then the pressure was indeed on for myself and old chum and fellow practitioner Luke Adamson to make a full days session an engaging, fulfiiling and above all else fun one…

Having met with the wonderful teachers prior to the visit we each devised a flexible plan which left plenty of room for the pupils to lead on the journey around the spaces with emphasis on engagement with the three exhibitions that are part of the BAS9.

Having prised them apart from their beloved bags and coats and after a quick intro we whisked off a group each to our chosen first stops…

After a minute long chance to openly snigger, guffaw, giggle and the freedom come up with a word bank of rudities based on the full nude portrait in front of them we were cleansed and ready to shout initial feelings and thoughts about what appeared around them.

‘Childlike’, ‘Not the sort of pictures I’d expect to see in a gallery like this’, ‘not very well painted’, ‘weird’, ‘kind of random’, ‘odd perspective’ and ‘a bit rubbish’ were a selection of noted call outs from frowns and blank stares that began to open up as the story behind the 28 paintings by the mysterious Hermione was revealed. Every word was to be recorded in as creative way as wanted and phones were allowed to take snapshots of areas with the intention of adding text over the images using the phones editing apps. Questions began to emerge from the sea of dark blue blazers and we then moved into a period of free drawing to ‘accidentally’ create a mass of portraits that we similarly knew nothing about. The creators then reviewed their own gallery of misfits and added text to the faces relating to who they thought their portraits were, their feelings, lives and imaginary stories.

The Ghanaian sack textile made us use unexpected senses to explore its story and words were collected on similarly distressed writing materials with the intention to stitch them all together on the return to school.

The afternoon’s ambles were led by the pupils which gave me the wonderful opportunity to think on my feet as a practitioner and come up with some instant creative outcomes and responses to what the pupils wanted to look at. After a map making session about future hopes and dreams there was a chance intervention by the wonderful volunteer Sue in the deeply emotive exhibition on the loss of children in birth that inspired a sudden burst of emotive word play mixed with origami foldings in which to capture the text and rounded off a hugely satisfying day with a hugely satisfying group of young people and school staff who I hope, left the gallery feeling more informed, stimulated and more likely to return to other creative spaces in search of inspiration…

My favourite responses of the day came from one of the 4 brilliant Manchester PRU pupils who attended the sessions and made me reflect, listen and laugh throughout their time with us and were inspired by the Ghanaian textile…

‘THE SMELL OF EXPLOITATION’ and ‘THE DESPERATION OF HOPE’….