Week 6: Nov.4, 2016 

Last Friday was the D-day of my workshop for Fraser River School.

When I arrived on site at 10:00am, I was notified that we were unable to use the theatre and projector for the workshop and had to use the studio spaces instead.

Honestly, I was disappointed because I had edited a video composed of 17 clip of monsters, robots, machines, people who have a special type of vision like Pale Man, Minions, Coraline, Sauron, Baymax, etc. It was to serve as a visual aid, running in the background as students work, to inspire them.

Nonetheless, I tried to look in a positive direction, thinking maybe the absence of the video would allow room for more creativity.

At 11:00am I started to set up all the materials and distributed them evenly into 16 groups.

Materials consisted of :

styrofoam balls, cones, crepe streamers, wire, nails, googly eyes, feathers, pipecleaners, bells, beads, clay, toothpicks, wooden dowels, buttons, string, paper parasols, egg cartons, boxes, glue, and scissors

I was worried that the Gr.6 and Gr.7’s would find the workshop and its materials as too “crafty” and boring. But to my surprise the students were really excited to do some hands-on work.

After all the groups received the gallery tour and finished their works, we had a time for presentations where groups volunteered to explain their pieces and sometimes even tell a fictional narrative about the creature. A lot of groups volunteered but due to time we were only able to hear a couple which was unfortunate.

Here are images of some of the works. The students really embraced the ideas of the exhibition and added their own personality to their works.  Some pieces completely blew my mind in terms of design and concept.