Friday 4 September 2015

Pitt Rivers welcomes Artist Teacher Scheme from Brookes, August 2015

Hello, my name is Katherine Rose and I am the new Secondary and FE Education Officer at the Pitt Rivers Museum. I am excited to be joining the team here and to contribute my first post to the Pitt Rivers Education blog.

In August we were delighted to welcome Rachel Payne and eleven teachers in the new cohort of the Brookes' Artist Teacher Scheme to the Pitt Rivers Museum. We had two days of workshops and creative work inspired by the museum.

Day One was led by artist Miranda Cresswell, who is currently the artist in residence for EngLaID British Archaeology project. She asked us to think about landscapes we loved or knew well, and make drawings of textures in museum objects that reminded us of those landscapes. The Annexe then became a studio as we developed these initial sketches into art works using collage, paint, pastel and chalk. 

On Day Two Adrian (Joint Museums Art Education Officer) and Andy and I led discussion and activities focusing on interpretation. We considered how we interpret art and museum artefacts, and ways of doing this. We also looked at how visiting artists had created installations in the Pitt Rivers Museum as a way of interpreting or intervening in the collection. There was a creative chinese whispers activity that involved writing tweets, drawing and making models of different objects. We finished by doing in-depth explorations of three objects in the Pitt Rivers collection to think about how we build up layers of meaning based on our personal response and associations, what the object looks like and is made of and what we can find out from similar artefacts. We also thought about the different contexts we can understand the object in. Each group made a performance based upon their object to finish the day.


Performance inspired by the Haida Totem Pole (1901.39.1) © Pitt Rivers Museum 
We wish the group all the best for what promises to be an interesting and creative year ahead as they develop their practice and link this back to their work as art teachers and educators.


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