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Skin 'n' Bones
April 2009
Combined Art and Music project - Spring Term 2009
At the beginning of the academic year the whole of Year 8 had the opportunity to visit The British Museum for ideas for a combined Art and Music project. This year’s project took the Day of the Dead Festival in Mexico as its starting point and the visit enabled students to see Day of the Dead paper maché skeleton figures and to visit the Mexican Gallery which contains artefacts from the ancient civilisation of the Aztecs such as mosaic decorated skulls, temple sculptures and beautiful gold jewellery.
The students were taught the significance of the festival which is a fusion of two cultures - the Aztecs, a fierce, strong culture who dominated Mexico during the 13th and 14th century and were infamous for their human sacrificing which they believed maintained the earth’s seasons and cycles and the Spanish Catholic Invaders’ festival of All Souls Day.
Back in school the students set about using the research in their art classes to help them design masks that were based on themes to celebrate the memory of the Aztec Gods from a time now forgotten and masks to commemorate someone who has died or how the students would like themselves to be remembered.
At the same time the students worked on musical themes and ideas that could relate to the work they had been doing in their art classes. Through a process of careful selection, each group decided upon a group of four melodic ideas that they felt would best represent their artwork. These four ideas were then mixed to form the sound track that would accompany the final presentations from each class.
It was decided that the best way to display this work would be in a final ‘catwalk’ show with each student getting the chance to show off their design to an invited audience of Year 7 students. The whole project was a great success and the students gained a unique experience as a result of their participation in the final event. The Year 7 students also had a chance to see what can be achieved through consistent hard work and effort and they now know what they have to do to improve on the results of this year.
A big thanks goes to: Mr Morris, Ms Evans, Ms Riddlesdell, Ms Sullivan and Ms McEvoy who all helped in the production and arrangement of the performance and to all the Year 8s who took part and worked so hard on the project.