Move On Up! Event at UEA

Illustration Workshop: Looking into Character Design

Thurs 24th/Fri 25th April - Workshop with Leanda and Sophie.

Over two days, I volunteered to run an Illustration workshop about character design to Year 10s and 11s at the UEA with Leanda and Sophie. Leanda ran this workshop on her own last year so we both helped alongside her original workshop she made. Presenting the students with 3 character descriptions, first step highlighting key words, thumb-nailing ideas in coloured pencil and then developing an image further through collage.

It was a great opportunity for me to experience teaching secondary school years and I have only had experience with primary. The first day was not enjoyable at all. This is because some of the students clearly didn't want to be there and it was hard work to get them to do anything at all. By the end of the first day, I was very put off teaching secondary as I did not enjoy my day and felt that we did not feel that the students were getting anything from our workshops. We also didn't realise that the UEA were offering a 'taster' event of many different subjects, offering economics to medicine. Therefore we thought that possibly we should have made our workshop more informative, as our was rather practical and not delivering/lecturing information about Illustration as a subject that other subjects might have done. However, the second day went a whole lot better! The students really enjoyed the workshop and put in some good effort. My overall experience of the event was that I know that I don't want to go into secondary school children. Even though I enjoyed the second day and it felt rewarding that they learnt something, I enjoy teaching key stage 1 or 2. Being a creative person, younger children learn more through visuals and practically making things therefore being more responsive and enthusiastic to arty workshops, and this is what I like to work from.