Sue Blandford Artists Placements at Allen Edwards Primary School

The themes of the workshops were the childhood and identity of the children juxtaposed with the childhood memories of some of their mothers. Many of the mothers come from countries such as Morocco, Portugal, Somalia and the Caribbean and their childhood experiences were very different from those of their children.

I began by introducing ideas of story telling in painting. Using images by well known established artists, one child described a painting to another who then drew a picture based solely on this verbal information. The results were wonderfully inventive while at the same time the children were still able to easily identify the original source from their own picture. These pictures enabled the children to explore the concept of translating ideas into images and identifying appropriate language with which to say something.

Building on this we made a series of self portraits about identity exploring the physical and inner self in order to find ways to tell our own stories and those of others. For me the project evolved through the conversations I had with the children about themselves and how they could best express this with painting and drawing and the responses to the imagery that emerged. Some of the children also "interviewed" their parents to get first hand stories of their childhoods which we in turn produced images of.

The workshops culminated in a display of drawings and a show of digitally projected images of their paintings which got a very positive response from the parents and allowed the children to see their work in a different way.

Sue Blandford