Moat Town
If a group of Year 8 students were given the opportunity to realise in print their thoughts on and experiences of the area in which they live, what would they come up with?
In the Spring 2015 22 year 8 students from Moat Community College in Leicester’s Highfields took part in a project during their art class to make Moat Town, their version of where they live and go to school, inspired by the Highfields and Spinney Hills area of the City. Over eight weeks the group worked with LPW artist printmaker Nichola Hingley and LPW Apprentice Katy Goodrich to translate their thoughts and ideas, using printmaking to produce images that would become the source material for an artwork to be displayed at their school.
During the sessions, students investigated their local area, drawing what they saw around them; their school, local shops, interesting buildings. They also visited the LPW studio and found out about our equipment and facilities, and used a used a range of techniques, including screenprinting, collagraph, drypoint and linocut to transform their sketches into printed images.
These images led the design of the “town”, brought to life in an installation constructed by Nichola, featuring a selection of those images applied to a 3D assemblage of lampshades and books as well as some of the original material.
At the end of the project, thee students and their families were invited to see the final artwork and excerpts of a film made to celebrate the project. Additionally, each student was presented with a memento of the project: a limited edition hand-printed Moat Town foldout book.
Moat Town was conceived by Leicester Print Workshop in partnership with Moat Community College as part of The City Classroom, a pilot initiative, created by the LLLP. Each partner worked with schools to investigate how together we can make the most of local arts and cultural assets and use them as dynamic tools for teaching and learning linked to the new primary and secondary curricula. The project aim was to build sustainable partnerships between arts, culture and local communities by integrating curriculum activities in and outside of school.
For more information about The City Classroom and the work we did, please go here.
The project was jointly funded by The Mighty Creatives and Leicester City Council.
Leicester Print Workshop are proud to be a part of The Leicester Local Learning Partnership (LLLP), a new consortium of cultural organisations who share a vision of building new and sustainable models for place based learning.
Moat Town – a film by Keith Allott from Leicester Print Workshop on Vimeo.
