Road Trip to Campus - 22nd March

So yesterday morning, myself and Andrea (module 3) set off nice and early (I probably wouldn't add the bight and breezy till about 10am!) for the long drive down to campus for the all module session. After a steady 3hour 30min journey - Add in an extra hour driving round in circles looking for a parking space we finally got in to campus safely with a cup of tea in hand.

Now initially I was thinking - I hope driving all this way is going to be beneficial. I had visions of going all that way and not actually benefitting from it, my partner was also very reluctant to the fact I was going. "Can't you just skype in? Do you really need to drive all that way?" However I couldn't have been more wrong!

Firstly came the indroductions and  it was really interesting to see the diversity of everyone's back grounds and what everyone does. It was also really nice for face to face cominication rather than just distant skype voices! and to actually meet Paula and speak to her in person I found a great benefit.

Now we played a few games yesterday, but the one that has stuck with me is the twenty squares. We got given a sheet of paper with twenty blank sqares on and we had a minute to fill the squares with anything. I found it extremely interesting to see what different people did and how people interpreted the task differently. Now I just filled my squares with random words and pictures. All positive happy things such as "fun" and a picture of the sun. Now Andrea took a different spin. She had taken the theme of what we were talking about during our introductions to each other so for example "Arts" and "BAAP" Contrastingly Lisa who was sat next to Andrea filled the squares with all stars but tried to make some kind of pattern and then in turn found out that she had filled all twenty squares. This is something that I would be interested to do with students as an introductory in Arts Award lesson just to see how different people work differently.

Another thing that has stuck with me from yesterday was the "Concept Drawing" - Now this is something that I did find difficult - VERY difficult. How was I going to get across a concept to a group of people that I barely knew only using lines and for one of a better word doodles. Now I decided to go with the concept of beginnings and endings, using a sunrise and sunset as my inspiration, and in all honesty I didn't have a clue where to start! I sat and thought for a while and decided the beginning is a good thing, so went for open shapes with no shading which felt "nice to draw" for endings I decided to go for harsher shapes stronger lines with a little shading (well as much as I could manage with a biro ;)) and after struggling thorugh I did have some kind of end product. Now I understood what it meant, but I'm not sure that I did get the idea across to the rest of the group, but it is something that I am interested in looking into and maybe using in future as an inspirational tool or even for just keeping notes. (I will post a picture of my end product in a future blog for you to all have a look and and admire my art work ;) )

The most helpful thing of the day I found was having time to speak to other people on Module one and with Paula, so we could discuss how we were all about the course so far and the feeling of being "A bit Lost" and "up in the air" were a few phrases thrown about, but it was extremely reassuring to hear from the module 2's and 3's that they felt exactly the same in the beginning and that it will settle down eventually. Reassuring word from Laura who was skyped in from Germany.

Also having good conversations with my fellow module 1's (Grace and Maddy) was also a great help!

So after a very successful session my self and Andrea set off on the long journey home. Stopping via Nottingham for food and a rest!

After an extremely long day was it useful? Deffinatly! was it worth the drive?  yes! I know feel like I am focussed on track and know where I am going with it all. We were encouraged yesterday to take photographs however I only actually managed to get one snap! Looking forward to hearing how other people found yesterday!