SKIN AND BONES - COMBINED ART AND MUSIC PROJECT
At the start of the Spring Term Year 8 students were invited to visit the British Museum to research ideas for a combined Art and Music project. In art they have been studying The Day of the Dead Festival which is held in Mexico on November1st. The Festival commemorates the memory of deceased members of the family and it is regarded as a very happy occasion. The students looked at artefacts from the Mexican Gallery and The Living and Dying gallery for ideas to take back to class for their mask designs.
Once back in school they set about using their research in their Art classes to help them and their class mates design and make the exciting and colourful masks that formed the main part of the final show. The boys had to choose a deceased person who they admired and their mask had to represent characteristics about that person. Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King, Shakespeare and more personal choices such as grandparents were examples of the range of people that the students chose to design masks for. The inspiration that they had gained from the experience at the gallery helped them to produce a consistently high standard of final design.
At the same time these students also worked on musical themes and ideas that could reflect the work that they had been doing in their Art lessons. Through a process of careful selection each class decided upon a group of four melodic ideas that they felt would best represent their artistic creations. 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 thing was a great success and the students, once again, got a unique experience as a result of their participation in the final event. The Year 7 students also got a chance to see what sort of thing can be achieved through consistent hard work and effort……and they now know what the have got to do to improve of the results of this year.
A big thanks goes out to: Ms McEvoy, Ms Ostensson, Ms Riddlesdell,
Mr Morris and Mr Kwan who all helped in the production and arrangement of the performance and to all the Year 8 boys who took part and worked so hard throughout the term.
