Why read this case study?
Visual arts project using text messaging
- Young women's project
- Youth workers and arts workers working together
- A project within a youth venue.
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What is the Shore?
The Shore is a new young persons' events and activities venue, which offers a wide range of workshops, projects and support. It has been open since June 2002, and was formed through a series of consultations with young people throughout Dundee.
Decisions on the facilities in The Shore, and the interior design of the building were led by these consultations. Since it has opened the young consultants have been involved with decorating various areas, including designing and implementing the décor in the toilets.
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Partnerships
The Shore has formed a range of partnerships with other agencies since the beginning of the building's refurbishment through to present and future plans. These partnerships give the project access to a wide range of skills and support as well as integrating it into existing activity for young people.
An arts worker at The Shore
The arts worker at The Shore is employed for 15 hours per week. She splits her time between contact time with young people in the form of workshops, delivering projects, and planning/evaluation. This allows art work within The Shore to develop and an exchange of skills amongst the youth workers.
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What is text it?
"Each lesson was packed with as much as we could."
Young person
The arts worker at The Shore, and the health promotion worker, seconded from the Corner, developed Text It as part of Dundee Women's Festival. The project was designed to build on the popularity of arts workshops run at The Shore. The idea was to create a text based art project for young women, exploring the power of words and images through the use of different 2D art mediums.
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How was it advertised?
The project was advertised in Dundee Rep Theatre's brochure on the festival and the Shore's own programme leaflet, as well as being included in mailings focused on young people that had expressed an interest in the arts at open doors sessions, or from previous projects. Word of mouth was also an important advertising strategy. Most of the young women who attended the project had been to workshops at The Shore before.
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What did the project aim to do?
The Shore explores a wide range of themes within projects. The main theme within Text It was communication. The project aimed to:
Allow experimentation
- Focus on art processes other than drawing
- Develop an understanding of the importance of developing an artwork
- Explore the theme of communication without sound
- Explore the notion of symbolism
- Combine words and images.
Flexibility was built into the project to allow young people to develop a range of skills and then decide on what their product would look like.
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How was it funded?
Text It was funded by money diverted from another area of The Shore's core budgeting. Core funding to establish The Shore has come from the Scottish Executive via the Xplore Social Inclusion Partnership. The Xplore Partnership has secured the lease of the Shore until March 2004 when the initial funding expires. The initial budget includes an income generation target of 30k per year.
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How was it structured?
"Even though I missed the first one, each lesson was packed with as much as we could."
Young person
The structure of the course was designed to allow enough time for young people to develop their own work whilst also ensuring that there was an achievable goal for the project. The workshops included a wide range of activities and were focused on facilitating the young people to develop skills and confidence. One to one sessions with the arts worker and health promotion worker were also planned in to assist young people to develop these skills and manage their own work and have a space to discuss their work.
The health promotion worker has a background in visual arts so was able to combine a broad range of experience of the arts with extensive community education experience.
Workshops
Text It consisted of six weeks of workshops, 2.5hrs long. They were run on Wednesday evenings to coincide with the building being open for another project.
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What was done?
The six workshops took place between the art room and the meeting room, which are side by side, the art room being limited in size but more suitable for messier activities. This room has basic facilities, including a sink and storage for art materials. Art work is stored on shelves just outside the art room.
At the end of each session they would have a short evaluation discussion and plan what materials and facilities they would need the following week. At the end of the project a number of different approaches were taken to evaluation, including filling out feedback forms and giving verbal feedback.
Week 1: Introduction workshop
This workshop explored issues of communication and self identity using magazines and collage. Activities also explored the language of messages and codes, symbols and creating chain mail via texts. The idea of mis-communication was also introduced and explored through a collage activity, especially how texts can be misconstrued or read differently.
Weeks 2 and 3: Taster sessions in different art techniques
Taster sessions with different art techniques were offered. For this workshop the art room, meeting room and multi purpose room were set up as stations for different activities. Staff did quick demos and groups had about half an hour at each station.
Printmaking: Young people had a chance to try out foam quick print, individual printing letter blocks and combining printing and collage. They made small pieces, using a text symbol to represent themselves.
Multi media: Inspired by the local artist, Will Mclean, young people experimented with working onto canvas or board, using collage, paint, sand in paint, layers and washes, varnish, modroc and relief. They also experimented with different scales of work and building up layers in their work using different techniques.
Week 4: Developing visual language and ideas
In this session young people developed their work using photocopies, acetate, writing and collage to make slides. The brief for the slides was that they showed fragments of text layered with coloured transparencies, projected onto artwork from previous sessions and photographed with a manual camera.
They played with the idea of time: how work can develop by changing the medium it is shown in especially when this distorts the images and text. They also used fragments of works to look at what they mean and how it is perceived. This was related back to the week 1 workshop where they explored how people perceive messages or parts of messages.
Weeks 5 & 6: Developing a piece of work
During these two weeks young people decided on the medium and scale they wanted to work within. They proceeded to develop their own piece of work. Each person created a finished piece of work, using the methods and techniques that they had liked the best. They could choose to collaborate on group pieces if they preferred. They also gave their piece of work a title, and some wrote a short statement to explain what their work was about, or how it came about.
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Future Developments
Future developments at the Shore will depend on funding. The Shore team intends to continue an arts programme that fulfils their aims to develop social skills, communication and expression skills. The Shore is also able to offer opportunities to exhibit work made by young people in arts projects, and the artwork made in Text It will be exhibited in the building in the near future. The arts worker is keen to take the opportunity to develop youth work skills and to pass on some of her techniques for engaging and developing young people's social and leadership skills in the form of peer led workshops.
"It was fun and the workers were really nice. We were allowed to use our own ideas."
Young person age 15
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Key issues for a project like this
- Is there a local event or festival that you can work with to develop young people's involvement in the local community?
- What interests do the young people involved have and how could they be used to develop a project?
- Is there an advantage to doing a single gender project?
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