ArtScapers

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Highfields is an amazing place to go and relax and find some quiet space……I don’t know why, but I feel happy on a Monday…..Welcome to our exhibition...

(by Hilary Cox Condron) We gathered the group to share our creativity and reflections during the final session at Highfields at the end of March. It was such a pleasure to see R welcome Ruth (from CCI) and City Councillor Alex Collis and then, having checked the trail with his zombie-detecting stick, confidently lead them through the nature area to introduce the other children and the artwork created to celebrate the area.

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There are many reasons children today don’t spend time outside  - but a lack of confidence, fear and caring duties have been some of the barriers for these particular children (some who never play outside, others who didn’t know Cambridge had a river).  Watching their confidence grow as they start to connect to nature and relax in this space has been a huge privilege.

I’ve been building artscaper links with these children, their safe-guarding team at North Cambridge Academy and colleagues from family therapy charity Cambridge Acorn Project over these last two terms. Our workshops have focused on being creative with natural materials in outside spaces we can walk to – this term we were able to work in the dedicated City council forest school space called Highfields, which is tucked away near the school.

Jacob, the therapeutic practitioner from Cambridge Acorn Project we have been working with, commented:

Many of the children have stated that they look forward to the session coming around each week - some saying it is their favourite two hours of the week. The simple truth is these children do not have a place they feel they can go out to in the community where they feel safe. Most of these children spend little to no time outdoors. Many have regularly spoken about death but have said that for reasons they do not know they feel happy outside at Highfields. The list of positives feels endless as children who rarely speak or make connections are starting to say a few words and work with other children. The positive effect this has had on this group of children has been commented on by teaching staff and parents who have seen a noticeable difference to the children since the visits to Highfields began.

Having this relaxing space to gently connect to our senses, emotions and each other has nurtured support networks as the children (some who barely spoke) formed friendships through creating together, expressed complex emotions through their drawings, and established relationships with Jacob that were able to continue throughout the weeks back in school and we hope into the future too.

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I love the sound of the wind, it’s like a waterfall.

I witnessed many significant moments. One week I watched how C dug a hole with a stick – like a small tunnel to another world. He has never dug a hole outside before he says. He never plays outside. Other children joined him, creating a fantasy world made of sticks and leaves, their gaming worlds starting to take shape in the earth. There were lively debates, fantastical stories, laughter and tears as villages, guardians and complex emotions played out in the mud.

My ADHD can relax here.

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Some of the children found a space and quietness at Highfields that - in their words - they don’t have with their ADHD. Sitting under trees, working with clay, drawing and talking together – we could see how their energy has relaxed over the weeks and allowed the opportunity to express conversations about identity and connect with gentler conversation.  

As we finished the final sharing session, I noticed that one of the children, who has barely spoken and, for the first few weeks didn’t engage at all, had created a beautiful and delicate display amongst the branches.  They pick up a small white feather and hand it to me as a gift. I put it safely in my pocket to add to my jar of treasures.

I wish this could carry on for ever, says T.

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This work was made possible with the support of the Leys Communities Fund. Cambridge City Council and in particular Cll Alex Collis have also been hugely supportive. The Highfields area is one of five across the city that have been designated as appropriate for these activities by the City Council as they recognise the educational value and the challenges many young people in our city are facing.
These experiences can offer different, creative ways of learning – often to pupils who might struggle in a classroom setting – and bring all sorts of benefits in terms of connecting young people to their environment. These sessions can help them think about how to look after nature, which is absolutely vital for the future stewardship of our environment and our planet.
Alex Collis, Executive Councillor for Open Spaces, January 2022

CCI works with CAP and the Fullscope consortia to create a mental health system for children and young people in the county that is more accessible, relevant and inclusive. These artscaper programmes focus on outcomes for the young people that include more positive outlook, improved self-belief, more likely to seek help in the future, improved self-awareness and improved mental health coping strategies.

(by Hilary Cox Condron)

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We gathered to celebrate the end of ten weeks of Artscaping work at Thongsley Primary School on The Oxmoor Estate in Huntingdon earlier in July. I have been working with fellow artist Tonka Uzu and thirteen 7, 8 and 9 year olds who were chosen to take part in this Empathic Communities by their SEN tutor and together they hosted us and also their headteacher, Mat from the Cambridge Acorn project and Ruth from CCI.

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(by Hilary Cox Condron) The small forest area at the bottom of Thongsley Fields Primary School is so overgrown the group is swamped in green and look up to the flowerheads as they walk through it. Having spent a few sessions practicing different ways of looking, marking and recording, the children now naturally fall into conversation and questions about their environment: they stop to look closely at seeds and blossoms; they stretch and stoop to collect treasures; and they find charcoal in the firepits to make their marks as they make their way through the ‘jungle’ sharing fantastical stories of beasts and birds.

(By Hilary Cox Condron) I’m working with artist Tonka Uzu across this term to build a new community of Artscapers at Thongsley Fields Primary School on the Oxmoor Estate in Huntingon. We were invited to work there by the Cambridge Acorn Project, a therapeutic charity supporting families, whose work we really admire.  Matt Edge, their chief operating officer, explains how the link came about:

We consult in schools, delivering classroom sessions and listening carefully to children and young people about the kind of things which they feel most benefit their mental health. One of the things which is consistently identified is being outside and in nature, in blue and green spaces, and exploring and creating. As a result of this, we are delighted to be working alongside Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination who are experts in this field as part of a wider Empathetic Communities Project (funded by the National Lottery Community Fund) in this school. This work is also part of a wider piece of work around Environmental Enrichment (EE) and thinking about children's mental health in a broad sense outside of the clinic room, and thinking about the kind of ecosystems organisations can work together to create and nourish which will benefit the mental health of children, young people and families.

Our group of twelve children are all in years 3 and 4 (8 to 10 year olds) and we are coming together for ten Thursday afternoons across this term. The school has a large playing field, rolling green spaces and a forest area – where the Head likes to sit around campfires with the children – and it is such a pleasure to spend time creatively exploring the areas with the children, connecting to the elements and enjoying the weekly bursts of sunshine, downpours and hail!  We are relishing the time and space to be together outside like this.

This was our theme for the Open Eddington Day this year - to join artists Filipa Pereira-Stubbs and Caroline Wendling and together curate a new museum of all things wild and wonderful discovered around the University of Cambridge Primary School and beyond. One hundred and sixty one people visited us during the day and everyone was invited to create their own sketchbook to help them in their exploring, with the request to return and record something for the Museum.

There has never been a primary school aged artist residency in a Cambridge University Institution according to Professor Pam Burnard, Chair of the Faculty of Education Arts and Creativities Research Group. Today, working with CCI artists Filipa Pereira-Stubbs and Caroline Wendling there was not one but twenty together with their Headteachers Paula Ayliffe and Sarah Stepney, their ‘Out and about’ teacher Jake Holt and 6 of their parents – Sophie, Isla, Anna, Tricia, Cheryl and Hulya. Esther Sayers also joined us from Goldsmiths University (writer of the original ArtScaper strategy) and as a group we thought about being ArtScapers in this extraordinary space.

Time was taken made to ‘meet’ the building and think about the work that happens there. The children explored together in small groups having set themselves the following questions they were interested in thinking about as they were looking and sketching:

How old is it?
Where does it come from?
When was it made?
What does it represent?
Is it for something?

We thought together about what learning is..

It goes in your brain… it goes in your brain and it stays there.  
You make a mistake and you learn from it.
There's a new strand in your brain.
You see things other people didn't.

Work was made in response to these explorations and installed around the bridge area (the corridor into the studio) and in the studio itself.

It’s a portal based on the black hole Yotam
It mesmerises you and pulls you in. David

(the library represents) letting the imagination come free. Yotam

This room has big windows for inspiration. Athena
There are big trees outside to give oxygen for our brains. William

ArtScapers has reawakened my interest as a parent and encouraged me to think about things I used to enjoy. It has re-engaged us. We’ve been playing at home with mapping our life on big rolls of wall paper. I notice how everyone chats more and friends join in too when they come and play. Tricia (parent)

Visitors arrived and the parents shared their manifesto they’d created together:

As parents we should help ArtScapers:
Be free, without constraint
Be who you are
Look at things in different ways
Tune in to where you are
(show that) Art is not just about sitting down with a pen at a table
(show that) Art is everywhere
(know that) Anyone can do it and there is no wrong answer
Everyone feels valued and can join in
Be excited by life
Take time to stop and stare and slow down
Feel free to use your head/own ideas
Re-imagine and experiment with tools and materials
Share experiences
Have space to talk and listen
Let our children lead and be curious
Value all skills
Value the power of art
Show that it’s good to make a mess
Be a companion and do things together, being open to being surprised
Give space to work things out together

The day ended calling together for us all as ArtScapers to:

Be free
Imagine anything
Have fun
Know anyone can do it, there are no wrong answers
Share and talk
Not rush
Try things out and experiment – make a mess
See that art is everywhere
Keep trying
Move around, be comfortable
Be brave and trust

As they left the children began to talk about who they wanted to share ArtScaping with. Benjamin (9) put this really well - We are the experts and it is much better to be ArtScapers together with someone new to it then they will see and feel what happens… which is much easier than trying to talk about it.

Conversations about the day carried on in the taxis home:

 (I especially enjoyed) meeting new people and making new friends. I’d like the opportunity to work with others again. Toprak

Art doesn’t have to be perfect. Athena

(I enjoyed) going to the different places and thinking about them. Art doesn’t have to be the same thing..it can be different. We don’t have time to learn at school. It’s too quick. Venya

With many thanks to the Arts and Creativities research group for inviting these artists from Mayfield Primary School and CCI.

On a Monday in early March we were joined by 360 ArtScapers from Mayfield Primary School to think about what energy looks like and how it moves. The children came in 3 groups throughout the day, taking time on their walk into Eddington to watch the wind and sketch together. Artists Filipa Pereira-Stubbs and Caroline Wendling introduced them to different ways of playing with paper before inviting groups to work collaboratively to create new sculptures. By the end of the day the hall was full of extraordinary pieces and we took time to lie under it and wonder at at our work together. All the materials were then recycled.

We liked how there were ideas but we used our own...making something so large…..that today I folded the paper more than 7 times..making new friends.

We will remember the really high roof, the sounds, the ropes coming down and the stone wall patterns.

We noticed how if you look at the structures at different angles it looks different …..you can make art with anything…. that what we do is right and not wrong.

Inspiration for the day came from the work of  Hertha Marks Ayrton, a female scientist working in Cambridge 150 years ago and the focus of a new commission for the centre by artist Yelena Popova.

I feel more awake and open now (not like our usual training days)

Year 4 of our ArtScaper programme began on January 4^th with the staff of Mayfield Primary School spending the day in Ashlyn Woods, a piece of woodland south west of Cambridge. The school’s twenty teaching staff and their two Headteachers spent a day of quiet exploration and reflection together in this ancient landscape.

Artists Caroline Wendling and Filipa Pereira-Stubbs led a day of thinking together on how to settle and be in this space and what the outdoors can offer their children back at school.  They shared work and ideas by artists including Nancy Holt, Robert Smithson and Nan Shepherd.

Yet often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him. ……….This changing of focus in the eye, moving the eye itself when looking at things that do not move, deepens one’s sense of outer reality. Then static things may be caught in the very act of becoming.

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland, 2011

Reflections on the qualities of the day included:

connections with others, calmness, time to be surprised….to settle and feel comfortable, slowing things down and not overplanning, invitation not instruction.

And the desire to think further about:
how to help children be unselfconscious and do their own thing, how the outdoors works so well as a place to get things wrong, how to offer comfort so can be confident and brave, shifting mindset so I can relax even when not looking how I expected.

Planning prompts were collected in specially created bags for the staff to take back for their second training day as they began to plan their spring term ‘out and about’ work. This initiative at Mayfield begun in autumn 2018 timetables a half a day outside the classroom every week all year for each class. Filipa and Caroline will be supporting one of these sessions for each class after the February half-tem whilst on 4^th March the whole school will be visiting Eddington for a day of ‘Waves, arcs and sparks’.

ArtScapers old and new and their families joined us in the garden of this award winning space to share work created this year and together build a new city scape. Working with just wire and wool, space blankets and tissues, an extraordinary community emerged as people of all ages joined in over the afternoon.

(by Caroline Wendling)

(by Caroline Wendling)

We began our day by asking children what is a community? - Everything around you said Orla. Then we invited them to create their own mind maps of what a community might include. Giang described it as where you write down your ideas…. you can share your ideas. And their shared mind maps proved brilliant spaces for the children in pairs to think, discuss, debate and share their ideas. They were striking in their individuality.

Ella P, Stella and Waka’s had the weather, bug toilet, ghosts and a love room.
Alper, Esha and Sofia’s had muddy puddles to get dirty in and sewers
Rezwan and Ayaan’s had a cave shelter, a tree house a hospital and a mosque

Our morning exploring newts ended with Alesia (7) singing this song of love and friendship she had written as she drew:

You are all alone
But you meet a boy
He had a home
And you are friend now
Then you are all again
Friend old friend
Come for ever with me

By Caroline Wendling

by Cansu

Our focus in Week 4 was the insects that can be found in the school grounds and how the year 2 class might invite a class of the youngest children in the school to become ArtScapers too.

Thanks to Dr Ed Tuner (University Lecturer and Curator of Insects, Insect Ecology Group at the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology), we welcomed Matt Hayes assistant researcher this week to help us discover the world of insects in the school playground.

The children shared with Matt and also our new volunteer Aoife what it means to be an ArtScaper – you design things…you make things…you look at things the way you want to were some of their comments. Alper said it was as working at things the way you want to. Making things in your own ways.

At first we thought about how insects use camouflage and made our own.  Children learned to move slowly in order to see more; a difficult task for some of them but they all adapted.

a fly walking to a spider web by Iriyana

There was the opportunity to hold some stick insects too. The handling changed children perceptions of insects; some had to overcome initial fears but others invited them to crawl on their heads! Children learned that these these don't bite and that the stick-insects swaying motion was a camouflage trick so it looked like moving grass. George was curious about scale and asked Why do they not get scared by giants (us)?

Then the children had the chance to use sweep nets to find their own insects. These were compared, studied and drawn guided by Matt’s expert knowledge. Children learned not only about the differences between an ant, a fly, a moth, but also the characteristics of beetles, true bugs and crickets.

moths by Hugo and Ayaan

Year L2 children really embraced the idea of teaching Reception class about ArtScaping.  We thought together about how they might do this, planning group sizes and activities to share that they thought the reception children would enjoy. Chaaya taught Jiawe everything she knew about insects and how to draw them; working side by side demonstrating both interest for the subject and immense patience.

By Caroline Wendling

Both the year 2 classes from Mayfield Primary School joined us this Thursday, becoming ArtScapers for the morning in Storey Field Centre’s main hall.  Fifty two children sat in front of three fifteen meters strips of brown paper ready to explore, make, tell and imagine.

Carrying on with our investigation into how we live beside the wild and share places with different species, the focus today was newts. A population of newts and great crested newts in particular were found on Eddington site during the wildlife surveys prior to construction and special measures have been incorporated into the site as a result, including a newt tunnel. Images of this and other sketches and films of newts invited the children to think in depth about how and where they live.

The morning would not have been the same without real newts from Ruth and Gladys’ back garden!

The children were able to gather round the large jars; observe and study the species. Each child produced a series of incredibly accurate drawings. They had been good listeners and observers of nature; the drawings demonstrated their understanding and interest in trying to capture the creature’s personalities, features, and behaviour. All were serious attempts to capture the life of the newts.

Telis’ drawing was exceptionally accurate and true to nature; he recorded the knobbly and crackled skin and the expression of the face. He had used his pencil with skill but then expressed disappointment at having added felt pen marks. We discussed it and agreed that the use of felt pen might have been better in another drawing. The conversation I had with Telis about his mark-making choices was no different to those I have with my Foundation students who are training to be artists.

By Caroline Wendling

Artists Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope were some of the first artists to work on the site now known as Eddington. They worked with the community to create a cob model of phase one on a scale of one to 30. The model still exists, albeit somewhat weathered. This week our ArtScapers spent time amongst the cob stuctures before immersing themselves in thinking about the animals that might live close to or under our feet.

Having made their own models of wren viaducts last week, I noticed how easily the children could visualise, compare and understand the models against the real buildings. They were able to represent the near and the far, the model and the built, without difficulties in one drawing.

The children worked together to create an extraordinary collection of imagined fantastical animals, working just with the materials they had gathered on their walk around the cob structures.  It felt as though the children applied their own alchemy; they managed to make earth look like ‘fur’, stones became bodies and flower petals like ‘feathers’. An atmosphere of study and engagement was apparent through the process of making and later sharing. As the children talked about their creations we further discovered children had thought of names, characteristics, and behaviours for their animals.

By Caroline Wendling

ArtScapers returned to Eddington last week on a glorious sunny day. Mrs Lisa LeMoal’s class of six and seven year olds (year 2) from Mayfield Primary School are leading the way this year and I will be working as the CCI artist helping them explore and discover the site. This year we can work in the centre created for the community – Storey’s Field Centre. The group will be joined at various points over the next two months by the youngest children in the school (a class of 4 and 5 year olds), their parallel year 2 class and also the Seniors Group (older local residents around their school) who are keen to get involved.

As in earlier years, we invited the children to look carefully as they walked into this new landscape, noticing the changes to the skyline and thinking about might be above them. They recalled some of these in the sketchbooks they made to start their workshop.

(by Susanne Jasilek with Esther Sayers) We shared a wonderful creative session with Anglia Ruskin University students on the  BA Primary Education Studies undergraduate degree in November. Thinking about ArtScapers as explorers/prospectors/artists/archaeologists, the group looked at the work created to date and talked about the values developed from the work there - slowing down, looking differently, not knowing, imagining and being curious. They then played with the entity and tea-house resource created by the work of ArtScapers in year 2:

Choosing from a materials table of carefully prepared packaging materials, students were invited to create a maquette -  a scaled model of a dwelling using their own ideas and adopting some of the ArtScaper values. 

They had to work with scale, volume, balance, purpose, and think how different materials, shapes and weight could work together.   There was generous time to reflect, adapt and add or discard elements of their dwellings, many returning for new bits of card. They used fluorescent tapes and duct tape to aid construction. Unique structures quickly developed and evolved. Mostly places where people would live but one was an astronomy centre and another a garage.

The Open Eddington day on Saturday 9^th September was the first opportunity for everyone to visit this new development.  People came from far and wide – an estimated 4000 visited the site during the day.

ArtScapers had created a new resource for the day that invited playful ways to think about future worlds and communities. Based on work made by the children during our year 2 workshops, we were delighted to be able to share them with artists Winter and Horbelt, on site to open their extraordinary new tea house, whose work the children had explored.

We want to engage ArtScapers with some of the site challenges and introduce them to members of the development team. Previous visitors have included the Operations Director and the Procurement Manager.

It was great that Alistair Dunsdon, Operations Project Manager was able to join both the recent workshops for the two classes from the University Primary School ArtScapers when they visited Gravel Hill. He came well equipped with props to illustrate how he stays safe on site – including boots, hat, glasses, and high vis jacket and he told the classes about was the extraordinary and elaborate underground waste system that is being installed. An example of the bin was there for the children as well as images of the specialist trucks and laser technology that will be used. The children were fascinated and as well as asking if they could get in one, their questions and comments included thoughtful observations about how far people might be prepared to carry rubbish from their front door and how the bin lorries will know when it is time to empty the underground storage units.

Alistair left with one of the model tea-houses made by the children to share with others in the team.

(by Gabby Arenge) I caught up with the ArtScapers project recently, joining the final workshop for the two classes from the University Primary School.  CCI artist Susanne Jasilek had planned a beautifully immersive session, inviting the children to think about the work of artists Winter / Hörbelt and their tea house for the new site.

(by Susanne Jasilek) It’s the future. The ArtScapers have arrived as explorers and prospectors at a site they do not know (actually this is the school) - a building shaped like a donut with space inside. They don’t know what it is - all they know is that it is over-populated and it’s going to be necessary to build extensions to accommodate them. As with previous ArtScapers projects - in this future we can no longer manufacture new materials or take anything further from the earth. We do have the technology though to upcycle old buildings - turn them on their head, cut them up, or place them one on top of another at odd angles.

Extra-ordinary and new ArtScaper architecture emerges from the discarded buildings. Functional buildings for plant making, palaces and one never ending paradise. Dazzling shapes and purposes are allotted to structures The children also think about practicalities and aesthetics. At the end the new individual extensions are place together creating a whole new future extension to this building. 

(by Susanne Jasilek) We have returned to the University of Cambridge Primary School this term, working again with the two classes we met last year to help artist Ruth Proctor make her film - We are all under the same sky. Our theme for our first workshop was Archaeology of now and I invited them to explore their own school - a new and contemporary environment -  as prospectors, inventors, explorers, ecologists, imaginators and artists. Could they imagine themselves arriving at this place for the first time with fresh eyes, as the archaeologists and prospectors of the future? We used specimen jars, small boxes, and all kinds of pots to collect the minutiae in the green area just outside the ring of the school building.  Viewed from afar this area seems quite straightforward - grass, wood chip, trees - but the children gathered a huge array of brilliantly diverse objects for drawing, analysis, inspection and naming, creating a new museum as they worked.

(by Susanne Jasilek) A weird and wonderful collection of new and diverse entities and environments were made by the Girton ArtScapers on our final week together. I invited them to think about identity, difference, connections and what it might take to make future communities.

The subject of our workshop was inspired by Melanie Manchot, the current commissioned habitation artist on the North West Cambridge Development site.  She generously shared with us some of her processes and the starting points of her current new work based around what a community might be from different perspectives. It was fascinating to hear some of her ideas and plans and very exciting - local people will be able to witness and attend some of her work in future months.

We decided to think about what a future community might be and also the inhabitants of a future community.   The children were invited to each design and create a new entitiy or life form in plasticine. They could be animal, plant, machine or a new type of future human. Some extraordinary designs and hybrid forms evolved - a new type of population. Diverse, original and full of possibilities. 

(by Susanne Jasilek) We enjoyed a really stimulating 2nd day with ArtScapers at Girton School. Having visited the North West Cambridge development site together a couple of weeks before, we started by thinking about architectural plans and aerial views. I asked the children to imagine their bedrooms with no roof or ceiling and being a bird or even a drone looking down. What do familiar things in our rooms look like from above? What shape is a person (a circle blob - some children suggested) or a familiar object? What is the relationship between objects in the room? This involved a lot of concentration and working out as extraordinary drawings evolved. I then asked them to add an object into their rooms that they did not have.  Here are just a few:

A dragon’s egg, a chocolate machine, sushi, time machine, doughnut, studio lighting, a wolf carpet, a unicorn, a money maker, a magic staff, puppies, kittens, magic handbag, slide, owl, pet horse, flying horse, boxing ring, flower pillows and a rocket.

The children carefully placed them as if in an exhibition in order to view and admire each other’s work.

Then we thought about the new Fata Morgana tea house by contemporary artists Winter & Hoerbelt currently being installed at the site; the materials, how it might be used, how they can soon visit it with their families. Having viewed pictures of other tea houses and pavilions old and new from around the world, they worked in pairs to design and make  models of their own ‘tea house’ type structures. What emerged were rich dialogues between partners and innovative and complex shapes of buildings -  each tea house had particular functions and uses. Some were executed religiously from working drawings and some changed as they were built. All were totally original and unique.

(by Susanne Jasilek) Girton Primary School joined us as Artscapers this week. Two classes walked from school to the North West Cambridge site – well over 2 miles - and arrived full of talk of the recent political events.

The invitation as before was to prospect, explore, collect, analyse findings and imagine the future. Together we played with different techniques of cataloguing and identifying including: drawing around shapes and forms; observational drawing; scaling up and down; representing and looking at textures; leaf rubbing; and also making colours from the leaves themselves and naming them. Freya created a new green -  hoola  baloo -  and a brown - fab weena.

Strong individual drawings emerged and the room was soon transformed into a gallery of beautiful work. 

What is a tea house? What does it feel like? How was it made?
Who designed it? What did they have to think about?

(Susanne Jasilek) There is a brand new tea house designed by artists Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Hörbelt's on the North West Cambridge Site (image shows artists’ visualization). It will soon be open to the public and Sam Wilkinson, Director of InSite Arts and part of the public art programme, came to share news of it with the children.

She talked about the plans, intentions and processes of the artists, describing the materials used and the way they worked with them. We thought about the interior and how people in the future might use it. Sam also talked about the theme of WANDERING as the idea behind this work and its placing beside the lake on the site.

(by Susanne Jasilek) We worked with Jake and Lisa, teachers from Mayfield Primary School, last year and were delighted that we could work with them again this year and their new classes. The children were invited to be ArtScapers and to think about themselves as people from the future - as prospectors, adventurers, botanists, scientists, explorers and ARTISTS. In this workshop the community room at the development site was to be like a time capsule where we could be masters and inventors of our own time.

Together we experimented and explored ideas around the subject of time and how we might represent it with symbols, shapes or words. Our prompts were the work of artist Ruth Ewan and historic ideas about measuring time (using water or pyramids or sticks). Ruth, one of the habitation artists for the site, has created Another Time at the site with the help of school children and the community. This is a field that has been planted with 5 million seeds chosen for their reliable flowering times that can be used to indicate time, an idea hypothesised by Carl Linnaeus in 1751.

A previous project by Ruth we also shared was based around the French Republican Calendar (used between 1793 – 1805) where days were named after tools, plants, seeds, equipment - things that were part of everyday life in France.  In Back to the fields, Ruth had filled the space at Camden Art Gallery with trees, animals, fish, seeds and everyday farm implements to form a calendar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

To begin with we invited the children to gather some autumn leaves as they walked to meet us. They placed them in a formation in the centre of the room to become the ArtScaper calendar and thought about how each day was represented by a leaf (someone’s birthday, a festival) and how by next Autumn they would be gone and could be replenished by a whole new season of leaves.

Working in groups they continued thinking about time and had free reign to number, name, or re-design new ways for measuring time. They quickly grasped this most abstract of concepts using things from their everyday lives to personalise time:

• groups renamed days after people they knew, things they liked, things they had
• one group decided they would have 100 days in a year and created a colourful pictorial calendar to signify these
• another created a calendar of games images and names

We wanted this year’s ArtScapers to meet a few of the people working on this development we are exploring together. We also wanted the team to meet some of the children discovering this new part of their city.

A few members of the development team were able to come and share a flavour of their work. They met the two classes from Mayfield Primary School we have been working with during November. Warren (Operations Director), Richard (University client representative for project team delivering nursery and community centre and key worker flats), Michael (Procurement Manager) and Sam (Arts Consultant) all visited and together we thought about questions like: What happens to the rain water that falls on the site? How is energy made for the site? Where does the rubbish go?

We found out about water conservation and  filtration on the site through the special sand in the lake, how one man is in charge of buying EVERYTHING and furnishing the apartments, how high the pile of building design drawings were for each of Richard’s buildings projects (higher than one of the children he thought), how bricks were made and what happens to the tea house when it gets wet.

It was good to see these two different communities meet each other like this.

It was brilliant to catch up with the two classes from Mayfield Primary School who were our first ArtScapers last year. They had time to see their work now re-imagined as a resource for others to play with as they think about cities and making communities. We shared news of the websites their work is discussed on and events their work has been framed around. We also asked them to write some guidelines for any new ArtScapers who would like to create their own ‘recycled house’. Here are a few but the full instructions can be downloaded here:

• First think about what you’re going to build.
• Top tip - You don’t have to think about it.
• You can draw what you want.
• You can make it out of anything.
• You can make it anywhere. I put mine in space.
• Share ideas as a group and tell each other what you are doing.
• Think of what materials you’re going to use. I used oil pastels.
• You need masking tape
• Use all the materials you want but don’t steal other people’s unless you have asked them and they said yes.
• Don’t’ draw things that are possible today – you can, but try and draw things that are made up and in the future.
• Try and have fun.
• Don’t use real bricks, glass and doors – you might get hurt.

We were joined by local families but also visitors from much further afield for our day of ArtScaping as part of this year’s Festival of Ideas (run by the University of Cambridge). The chancel of Michaelhouse began to fill with fantastical houses recycled from materials and homes from the past. We thought about the spaces we’d like to live and what was important for a community.

Here’s just a few of the new contributions to our ever growing city:

(by Susanne Jasilek) This was a unique experience for me as an artist and artist educator. It has allowed me to share, develop and evolve my practice in new ways. Although I have often facilitated art sessions using another artist's work as inspiration - both in gallery/museum settings and in and out of schools, this was a site specific project with diverse possibilities and special relationships that enriched it.

The placing of Esther (NW Cambridge), Ruth (CCI), Gabby (researcher) Lisa and Jake (teachers) and the teaching support staff, parent helpers and of course the children themselves in the position of ArtScapers and artists in residence fostered a new and different dynamic that felt more equal and democratic.

The broad spectrum of the habitation artists practice together with the emerging and constantly changing environment both natural and man-made was a rich resource for us all and inspired and enabled me to research and plan in quite a different way. I had to think how to synthesise the many artists, components and ways of working into something new, some approach which would make sense to young people. The scope, the variedness and complexity of the stimuli and context was unusual, fantastically exciting and a challenge. There were overarching themes for the public art programme and each artist had also been partnered with a University department. I wanted to help the children comprehend in a very real way what it is to be a contemporary artist working in this environment, how artists work, and how this creative thinking can be useful, even essential in other contexts.

My own process of working with people as a CCI artist remained the same. Namely to make a moment in time where young people can experience first-hand and authentically some of the practices and challenges faced previously by other artists.

To invite children to be artists in residence in their own right seemed necessary and wonderful, but also highly unusual. I had no idea how they would respond to my prompts, plans, questions, materials. I had especially planned for them to only encounter the work that had already been made about the site once they too had had the chance to respond creatively. I think this helped them to really value their own ideas and not think of themselves as imitators.

Looking back I feel that they exceeded my expectations on every level. It was valuable too to see how Jake and Lisa engaged with their own work and their pupils in this environment. Their openness and enthusiasm was also a rich experience for me and the children. It has helped me a great deal with thinking how I might develop working in the future with teaching support staff and parent helpers.

It’s been a powerful learning experience - I tried many new things that I had not tried before. I arrived everyday excited and ready for a new adventure and came away  stimulated, humbled and enthralled at the imagination and originality of the children - their far sighted vision for a future, their imagery and ability to embrace creative thinking, take risks and push their own boundaries.

The children’s work will become a public interactive art activity at the open day on 2nd  July. It will also be transportable and other settings will be found for it.  As an artist it’s inspiring and re-assuring to see that the work can go somewhere else and be valued and appreciated in a wider setting.

I have continued to think and talk about 'ArtScaper-ness' - where it begins and ends, its potential, longevity, where it belongs, where it works and where it can go next.

It’s been a great privilege. Thank you to all my fellow ArtScapers.

What does it mean to be an ArtScaper? …to ArtScape? …to embody, embrace or exhibit ArtScaper-ness?

As an MPhil candidate studying Arts, Creativity, Education, and Culture at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, I (Gabby Arenge) have been chewing on these questions over the past two months. During that period, I have planned, participated in, and examined the ArtScapers programme as a part of my Master’s thesis research.

Soon after joining the initiative, it became clear to me that I could not answer these ArtScape(r)(ness) questions alone. Although originating from the work of Dr Esther Sayers with Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination, the NW Cambridge Development team, and the NW Cambridge Artist-in-Residence programme, ArtScapers has truly become a community-based and community-driven initiative. Children, parents, teachers, charity coordinators, artists, and researchers have been the lifeblood of the programme. Their experiences, perspectives, personalities, and values have influenced ArtScapers’ development and continue to mold its direction and identity.

Thus, upon completing the final workshops and reflections, I consulted many of the ArtScapers in Mayfield Primary School together with the programme team with hopes of discovering how this multi-faceted and vibrant community has come to describe and identify itself. I was not disappointed with what I found:

To be an ArtScaper, you have to change—change yourself and change your community. Heinrich, 8, Student

You’re a collective of artists working together on ideas and explorations and findings ... you’re archaeologists, collectors, curators, conversationalists, researchers.  I don’t just see it as “I’m an artist and I’m painting pictures.” It’s quite broad, really broad actually, because… a really huge part of it is making and creative thinking.
Susanne, CCI artist

It’s just exploring ideas.
Tarnia, Teaching Assistant

Having and giving alternatives to be more free … and a space for exploration. It’s like looking at the same place with different eyes.
Elizabeth, Parent

I think all ArtScapers are co-producing knowledge about the NW Cambridge Development. I include the habitation artists in that. In a way I think they are ArtScapers, too. We are all using art to explore the landscape of the NW Cambridge Development—whether we are residency artists, children, adults that are helping—that’s the thing that we are doing.
Esther, University Lecturer and Researcher

It’s been thinking about the uses of the land in a sort of artistic way, and the connection of the children to the site. I quite like the idea of connecting the re-designing of the site to re-designing yourself.
Jake, Teacher

To be an ArtScaper is to look at something and make your own ideas—just think of the idea you thought before and mix it up so you can make something even bigger—and then just design it and find stuff that you might find in the future and use those stuff to help you build it.
Jared, 8, Student

I think it involves using a kind of lens, it’s like seeing that world through the lens of these contemporary art practices – and it’s kind of opening that sense of what a contemporary artist might be doing … It’s like serious play and being very, very thoughtful about it. It’s being seriously playful and about trying to hold that space.
Ruth, CCI

It means how something is molded and how something changes. It suggests constant changing of something and shaping something and relating that to the artwork and its relation to the environment that you’re in. It’s that link between the environment and how you can use that in your activities.
Lisa, Teacher

These reflective conversations with my fellow ArtScapers have been enlightening and inspiring—and have helped to enrich my understanding of what it means to be an ArtScaper.

I have therefore come to believe that being an ArtScaper is about being a member of a community in which everyone engages freely, plays seriously, and creates artistically whilst exploring and grappling with issues related to community development. ArtScapers work together; they build, they imagine, they design and redesign. They are collaborative, curious, and inclusive. They are open and welcoming to change and they are NW Cambridge’s ambassadors for the future.

I believe that ArtScapers have become an invaluable aspect of the Cambridge Development project. They have become models for how to build a creative community within a changing community. In just a few months, they have begun to craft a shared history for NW Cambridge, which is a narrative that I hope will continue to inform and feed the growth of this place as buildings materialise, residents relocate, and the community flourishes over the next ten years.

This wordle was created from all the ArtScaper conversations I have had:

In our final workshops exploring Ruth Proctor’s piece We are all under the same sky at the University of Cambridge Primary School, each class created imaginary people for different countries. Then in pairs they set out to find their countries and measure the number of paces in between. Esa and Francesca carried their characters between Sydney, Australia, and New Delhi, India (44 paces) whilst Dhanvika and Eleanor were moving between Havana, Cuba and South Georgia, trying out different ways of moving:

We’ve tried running and jumping and big steps and footsteps stuck together and this kind of running. We’ve going to try hopping now.

Our ArtScapers community expanded this week to include the year 1 and 2 classes at the University of Cambridge Primary School. This beautiful new building is full of light and space with their own piece of public art set into the courtyard canopy – We are all under the same sky by Ruth Proctor.

CCI artist Susanne Jasilek invited the children to really spend time under the many skies depicted in this extraordinary piece. They had time to lie underneath a favourite panel and dream and imagine before re-creating it as first a monochrome sketch and then a painting before finally travelling in pairs across the courtyard to find a new country to think about. Their individual interpretations were particularly striking.

(by Susanne Jasilek) What an amazing last week

We began with an ArtScapers walk, counting our paces down the long beautiful tree-lined avenue until arrival at the studio. There was an invitation to make up a number if we ran out of names. Some children counted very accurately, some reached fantastic numbers of trillions and millions. The sound of all the numbers being counted made a really interesting sonic piece and was recorded.

(by Susanne Jasilek, artist) Returning for the second week the ArtScapers used their walk down to Gravel Hill Studio to imagine how future people might move in space. They had to copy their partner who invented a new way of walking - silliness was encouraged!

In the studio we worked on recycling houses from photocopies of 1960's and 70's stark architecture.  Thinking about ecology and sustainability, their brief was to make new habitations out of old. We were imagining a period where we were no longer allowed to take materials from the earth or manufacture any man-made ones but did have the technology to turn buildings upside down or sideways, to add bits on and cut bits out.

(by Susanne Jasilek, artist) A new group of young artists in residence from Mayfield School arrived today. As ArtScapers they came as  prospectors, collectors, explorers and artists. I asked them to imagine that it was the future and they were the first arrivals on this site.  We listened and observed our surroundings and collected natural and man made objects, including some very tiny things that would normally be overlooked. We wondered if the building site in the distance was an old ruined city or a new one emerging.

On arrival at the Gravel Hill Studio, the children examined their finds carefully, drew around them and gave them new names just as early explorers had done. They scaled them up and examined and drew details. After they used bigger finds from the site - bricks, metal, stones and components likely to be found in landfill in the future and created sculptures. They had to think about colour, texture, balance, relationship. Some worked on their own, others collaborated and worked in groups. There were many discussions and conversations and decisions made as a series of orginal and unique sculptures were created.

Finally I invited them to curate a show - a Museum of Things - both inside and outside and afterwards we came back as visitors to own wonderful exhibition. We tried to make sure that everyone felt they had a voice and was noticed.

The workshops were designed to link closely around themes that arose from former Artists in Residence at the NW Cambridge site who had each collaborated with a Cambridge University department.

We are also referring to the 5 framing themes of the North West Development Arts Programme:

COMMUNITY - PLACE - SUSTAINABILITY - ECOLOGY - ARCHAEOLOGY

The ArtScapers will be returning this week with their amazing ideas and perspectives.

We began the process of mapping where children’s ideas have led us in Cambridge at our workshop with Historyworks at the Cambridge Arts Network conference in March.

This process will be continuing with children from Mayfield Primary School as they become young artists in residence as part of this programme.

Educators and practitioners working with children and young people are invited to join us at a hands-on workshop at the Gravel Hill Studio. We will share some of the contemporary art practices the children have played with and discuss where their ideas have led us as we develop new resources for others.

After months of planning and thinking about how to connect schools to the North West Cambridge Public Art Programme, we have finally begun to meet the children. Artist Ruth Ewan has invited the two year two classes (6 and 7 year olds) at Mayfield Primary School to help her with her new work for the site – A testing ground for a public clock.

We are curious to know how the children describe the role of an artist before meeting one so suggested their teachers explored some of their ideas in advance. They talked about what an artist does, and where and how they work. For many it seemed that an artist is someone who paints and works in a gallery (and might even look like a princess):

Mayfield School is to be our first partner on this project. We have met through the Learning without Limits network and are delighted to be able to begin exploring ideas of co-creation together. Their welcoming notice board sets 'creativity' as a core value which bodes well as we start to plan how to involve the school community in the North West Cambridge Development Art Programme both present and past.

CCI Artist Susanne Jasilek, the recent artist-in-residence at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, also joins the team.