Creative ID: 200
Christchurch.
My arts or creative practice (including details about my specific focus within that art form/practice and my strengths)
We both have extensive experience in a wide range of creative practices. Both have a background in performance art and community-engaged practice, but also work with collage, badge-making, textile and rope crafts, poetry, sculpture, music, and more. One creative engages a lot with research and using art as a means of learning and generating new understandings. Her work often results in accompanying essays, poems, or other text pieces. She’s interested in exploring notions and modes of diversity and inclusion, and talking about how the world works and what we want to see in it. The other's creative practice often centres around the body, uses absurdity, ritual, and aspects of the everyday. Her work is both earnest and emotional, while also occasionally confronting. Her practice incorporates performance, video, photography, and curation. She operates both inside and outside of the traditional gallery space, with an interest in creating shared experiences where the viewer becomes an active part of the work. Together they are interested in running education programmes that bring together a range of materials and mediums to bring up questions and discussion about the world we want to live in.
My track record of experience and success - or the track record of experience and success of the creative or artist that I will partner with
We've been running community events as a team since April, but collectively have over 10 years experience in creative practice and event production. While education and working in schools is relatively new for us, we’ve run over 20 workshops in the last two months and have found them highly successful and'enjoyable. One of our creative's work has been featured in SCAPE 2019 and she has shown work around New Zealand and internationally. A prolific Christchurch artist, she has created, produced and performed in events that focus on building community and resilience. She is the Access Coordinator for a contemporary art space, creating public programmes to engage a wide audience. She is also a co-director of the Christchurch Dr.Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. Our other creative spent two years managing CoCA. She works with a social support service for LGBTQIA+ young people. She has exhibited at galleries in Auckland and Christchurch, and has written for the Physics Room, North Projects, and Un Projects. This year we have delivered an eight-day public art festival in the CBD as well as run a series of kids workshops involving badge-making and textile/rope craft.
Describe the experience you have had working with children or young people, teaching or facilitating creative processes
This year we have delivered over 20 creative workshops with children and young people, focusing on collage, badge-making, and textile/rope crafts. Our workshops are often process-based. We have experience in delivering a workshop series with the Centre of Contemporary Art, which resulted in a public performance. This workshop worked with eight youth interested in performance art to develop and deliver the performance. Additionally, we have experience in running CoCA’s public programme, including working alongside a range of artists to deliver children’s workshops. Together, we have experience with working with children and young people aged eight all the way to adults. Wevhave worked with students with special needs, learning difficulties as well as students with English as a second language. We both additionally work in the arts as producers and makers. The themes we work with include collaboration and community-engaged creative practice, as well as notions of identity, home, self, and inclusion. The Creatives in Schools programme we’re interested in running encourages children and young people to think about and discuss the world that they’d like to live in.
Why I want to be part of the Creatives in Schools programme and how my involvement will link to my creative practice
We are both passionate about working with children and young people, and love the workshops we’ve delivered so far. Our creative practices are both community-engaged, and inclusivity is a core value we hold. Engaging with more audiences and working within schools aligns closely to our kaupapa. We’re really keen to encourage exploration and understanding of place and identity - this is how we work, too! We also appreciate the importance of a wide range of mentors and representation to children and young people - we both remember how significant having artists visit our schools to work with us was, and want to provide the same experience to as many people as possible. A lot of our work is process based, emergent and collaborative. Including these methodologies and approaches in workshops will be beneficial in broadening young people’s understanding and approaches to art, making and more. We want to run term-long projects with schools and kura that bring together and showcase a wide range of practices, materials, mediums and approaches, and to encourage children and young people to think critically, and to talk about the world they want to live in and the ways to make that world possible.