Aimhigher - Observe and Imagine

Golborne High School, near Wigan

The landscape artist, Gemma Gaskell worked with Year 7 and Year 8 students, to explore how organic structures can create visual metaphors for growing and evolving into the future. Students made drawings from a still life set up in the classroom. She encouraged them to extend their drawings by adding more paper, not necessarily in straight lines, so that the sense of adventuring into the unknown became exciting, integral to the underlying idea of embracing change, challenge and risk.

The students were then asked to work on a much larger scale, using their observation to analyze and record what they saw. Their mark-making also included fragments of language to do with aiming higher, searching, discovering. As their confidence grew, Gemma encouraged them to begin to make imaginative leaps. They moved away from the familiar observed forms and began to imagine forms of their own. They are very physical works, and seem to capture the spirit and energy of the natural landscape. The process of creating these drawings reflects a powerful sense of discovery, with students feeling much more confident and willing to take risks, to think beyond what they can see, and to imagine other realities.