Promoting a department can be a tricky balance of modesty and outright brashness; no one likes a show-off. I’ve been trying to get this right for a while and I’ve had some success with long-term installations of large-format displays that have lasted well. I’ve aimed for displays that serve as a celebration of student achievements as well as a powerful tool for communication, education and community-building.
Getting started
The 'learning journey' for this began with a conversation I had long ago with a colleague which led to us making a huge display about Dubai. From there, I have created four others around school. As a school, we’re proud of student creativity and ambition. I’ve used that, combined with the learning journey, to create impactful displays that fulfil many purposes.
The initial project on Dubai had funding behind it, which of course helped. Working with the head of Geography, I applied for £250 from our Arts Award status and designed a series of lessons that brought in Matt, a local artist, who took the work my Year 9 students created on Dubai (a mixture of what we’d now recognise as word clouds, collages and paintings) and sat with each class to create an installation.
Students worked with Matt and explained their ideas while Matt interpreted them and cut them up, creating a 244cm x 122cm (8ft x 4ft) mixed media installation. The students could not have had a better learning journey. I managed to run out of money but wrangled another £100 for Perspex so the installation was protected. Now it sits happily at the back of my classroom, silently challenging (or encouraging) me to go one better.