A Journey of Reflection and Expression
A group of Bolton School Girls' Division pupils in Years 7 to 9 recently immersed themselves in two days of creative health workshops as part of an Arts Council-funded collaboration with #BeeWell and Curious Minds. Those taking part were representatives of THRIVE, the Girls' Division's PSHE programme.
During the two days of creative health workshops, the THRIVE representatives developed creative approaches for reflecting on themselves and others. The sessions focused on embracing mistakes, valuing flaws, and improvising new directions when the unexpected happens through activities like continuous line drawings and kintsugi mixed media collages. The students engaged in memory work to generate writing deeply connected to people and place and also producing empathetic poetry borrowing from word banks made of mashed up famous poetry. Pupils collected fine art images and film stills to express emotions and ideas, experimenting with emergent AI technology to enhance their manually crafted artwork.
VFX specialist, director, and AI for film expert, Javier de Prado, played a pivotal role in guiding pupils through experimental image generation, storyboarding short film ideas derived from their reflective self-work, and imparting editing skills. This empowered students to begin to create short art films stemming from their self-exploration and art appreciation. The resulting work will be developed into a portrait gallery accompanied by film screenings, providing a platform for students to share their creative health learning with their form and year groups.
Early glimpses of the girls' remarkable work can be seen in their anthology 'My Mind is Messy', which offers a sneak peek creativity and self-discovery that unfolded during these workshops:
This initiative is connected to a larger 'Neighbourhoods Project', set to be facilitated by the school's community arts collective, Creatives Now, during the upcoming Easter Holidays. The project promises an engaging array of multi-arts workshops featuring international artists, designed to provide unique avenues for self-expression and exploration.
Read more about 'The Great Get Together' project
More details on how pupils can access the Creatives Now workshops with international artists will be shared after the half-term break.
