Archbishop Sancroft

The starting point was individual and group identity, which seemed to be the central concern for this group of pupils. Some were year 9, about to progress to Key Stage 4, others were already in year 10, but all were developing in one way or another a sense of who they were in the context of school and in the area of Harleston in general. The mapping exercise at the beginning of the first day and placing words around the school established how identities are strongly connected to a sense of place. This theme was developed in an even more personal way for the second day, which looked at the idea of landscapes as part of each person's interior life ('inside me'). The final results demonstrated the extent to which everyone had understood this as a powerful idea, expressing strong and generally very positive feelings about themselves and their environment through large scale drawing and structured as well as free-flowing discussion.

We began this project with a simple mapping exercise, which allowed the group (a combined year 9 and 10 class drawn from two schools) not only to trace their local area but also to add labels about how they felt about different places they knew or  would like to explore. The artefacts used to stimulate discussion and to develop further this idea of a sense of place were drawn from two world regions, Papua New Guinea and Australia. The PNG artefacts demonstrated a society strongly connected to natural resources, and very much concerned with expressing identity (through body painting, for example).  The aboriginal bark paintings, combined with discussion of how they were made, allowed pupils to think about how drawing and painting could be used to express ideas about people, animals and territory. Two artists, Jacqui Jones and Eve Stebbing, picked up on these themes and helped the pupils to work in both a conceptual and an expressive way. On the first day, pupils were encouraged to work with words, incorporating Norfolk dialect, which they placed around the school in sometimes literal, sometimes very poetic juxtapositions. On the second day, they worked more expressively, using drama exercises and drawing individually and in groups. Both days were a gentle attempt to encourage greater confidence and self-awareness, including thinking about ourselves in the context not only of school but also in terms of the countryside.

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