Aimhigher - Making Dreams Fly

Abraham Guest High School, Orrell, near Wigan

Year 8 students worked with the animator, Rowena Kidd, discovering the process of animation in order to make dreams and aspirations fly. They worked in small production teams, creating installations that mapped out a narrative, thinking very symbolically about colour, shape and texture. Their three animations are edited together to create a group animation.

Their first animation explored very simple ideas to do with layering colour. The resulting beauty and sense of blossoming and opening is captured by the process of animation. Colour spreads, evolves, blooms into life, promoting a feeling of celebration as the pupils began to explore the theme of ‘aiming higher’.

The box is a symbol of hopes and dreams, with each group exploring the idea in different ways. Plain cardboard boxes labeled ‘fragile’ held smaller boxes, tipping over to reveal rolled up lengths of coloured paper. Other boxes were quickly transformed by exuberant vibrant combinations of dripping paint and tissue paper, interspersed with a real sense of fun and involvement as the group include themselves in the excitement of the shapes and textures.

The final part of the process involved the pupils in the Paul Klee idea of taking a line for a walk, again reflecting the sense of journeying and adventure, drawing themselves into the contours of an evolving landscape.

Aimhigher - Mapping our Future

Shakerley CE Primary School, Tyldesley, near Wigan

The Year 6 class worked with the textile artist, Angela Cusani-Turner. They created a series of collaged panels that connect together to explore the idea of growing up and out into the world.

They began with drawings of themselves, their sense of home and their neighbourhood. They created collaged surfaces using maps of their locality and as the panel developed, local maps were replaced by maps from further afield. The children were encouraged to discuss their ideas about further education, creating a collaged panel made from leaflets from local colleges. A sense of purpose and direction has been created by the addition of vividly coloured and textured arrows, continually surging in the direction of further education. The panels are completed by a series of flags, communicating the idea of achievement.

Aimhigher - Unfolded Flying Dreams

Wigan and Leigh College

Students who have recently completed their Foundation Course in Art and Design spent a week working in the studio of the Drumcroon Gallery artist in residence, Rachel Arkwright. Rachel recently graduated from the Contemporary Crafts course at MMU, after completing her Foundation Course at Wigan. The young artist presented a really positive role model for the younger students about to embark on their further education. She set them a brief to work collaboratively to create a sculptural textile communicating ideas about achievement, aspiration, celebration, success, change, dreams and ambition.

Students worked with print to transform fabric with language and colour. Printed fabric lengths were then folded and stacked with the idea of building a stack of folded dreams, creating interesting viewpoints of edges and textures. As the stack developed, the group felt that the dreams needed to evolve out of their folded form into something much more organic and adventurous in order to capture the sense of excitement and change that aiming higher can bring. Folded fabric lengths were then reinforced with wire enabling the fabric to become more flexible and hold a variety of shapes. The dreams evolved into a suspended three dimensional form, overflowing with ideas and possibilities, with finer threads connecting to the ground, and a central crown, continuing the theme of something glorious and celebratory.

Aimhigher - Environment

Highfield St Matthews CE Primary School, Wigan Year 6 worked with the denmaker, Graham Marsden. They worked collaboratively to create large panels that will ultimately come together to create an environment, that can be disassembled and reassembled very easily and can accommodate the whole class. This piece remains a 'live' work, to be continued with next years class 6 as they approach the end of their primary education. The form of the environment is very significant, symbolizing the sense of transition from one environment to another. The Year 6 children have created a space within which they can reflect on their experiences of primary school and look forward to their future. In that sense it is a space that enables them to reflect on past, present and future concerns. Graham encouraged them to approach their environment as a special place, connecting with the nomadic tradition of a central communal space, particularly with regard to quiet reflection and resolving of problems. The inner surface of the panels reflects ideas to do with aspiration and personal development. When they are bound together, these revolve around a central point and during the planning stage there was discussion about the symbolism of fires, the sense that the energy within the tent will evolve outwards into the atmosphere, like the smoke from a fire, reinforcing the sense of aspiration.

Aimhigher-A Big Book of Personal Journeys

Hesketh Fletcher CE High School, Atherton, near Wigan

Year 10 students working with the landscape artist, Gemma Gaskell, developed tall narrow collaged panels, exploring routes and journeys to create personal patterns and textures. Their symbolic use of shape and colour was also inspired by the work of the Austrian artist, Hundertwasser.

The richly coloured surfaces reflect a sense of enjoyment and celebration. Students worked on the idea that their collaged surfaces represent the pathways and journeys they will make as they aim higher through education to personal fulfillment. Students found symbolic colours and shapes to create their own maps, drawing on Hundertwasser's use of contour lines to reinforce the sense of exploration and adventure.

Individual pieces have come together in the form of a Big Book, a form that represents ideas about personal development and knowledge. There is a strong sense of individual pupils collaborating with each other in order to share ideas and create networks of support and connection.

Aimhigher - Roots and Routes

Lowton Community High School, Lowton, near Wigan

Year 8 students worked with the artist, Gemma Gaskell, using natural forms as the starting point for an exploration into considering their future life. This project was partly inspired by the Google Earth website which enables the viewer to enter their post code in order to be zoomed down to earth from outer space and presented with an aerial view of their home. The thinking behind this project set out to turn the sensation of zooming down to earth upside down, aiming instead to inspire the young people to move outwards and upwards, embracing a sense of the world.

Students made drawings of natural forms that they had gathered in the school grounds onto collaged surfaces of local maps, school plans and the A-Z of Wigan. This became almost like a self portrait of the present life of the student – a symbolic reference to themselves at school.

Students then collaborated in groups to connect their individual drawings together and begin to work in card relief to create something much more structural, Discussion revolved around the decisions being made when connecting forms, with students encouraged to consider where they might journey to themselves and to anticipate planning their journey. The resulting forms seem to represent tree forms, solid, vertical, grounded - a sense that the young people are secure and confident in their ability to evolve and grow into the world.

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.