Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

20 minutes	Part A: Envisioning a brighter future
30 minutes	Part B: Imagining The Future Through Art
60 minutes	Part C: Create Your Artwork
60 minutes	Part D: Share Your Artwork
10 minutes	Reflection

Part A: Envisioning a brighter future

For details about the Create Your Mark for a Brighter Future Creative Competition, refer to the teacher content information.

Step 1.

Begin by explaining to students that they will be planning and creating an artwork that will be submitted to the Create Your Mark for a Brighter Future Creative Competition. Give students some of the details of this competition.

Step 2.

Now invite students to take a moment to think about why there might be a creative competition around this theme (with an emphasis on imagining a more sustainable future):

CREATE YOUR MARK FOR A BRIGHTER FUTURE

Invite students to share their ideas with the class through a class discussion. Through this discussion, you could lead students to the idea that many artists create art to share ideas, hopes and visions about the future. Sometimes these are ideas, hopes and visions they have for themselves; sometimes these are ideas, hopes and visions they have for the world.

In some cases, there is a specific challenge that the artist wants to address, such as plastic waste, biodiversity loss or equality. Looking at some of these issues and knowing how big these challenges are, it would be easy to make a sad or upsetting artwork. However, if you can create a hopeful artwork you are more likely to inspire people to share in your vision, and you might even be able to motivate them to take action.

Step 3.

Explain to students that they will now look at and analyse some artworks by artists who want to raise awareness, share a message or create their mark about a challenge that might affect our future.

Depending on time, you could do this in groups or as a class. If working in groups you could assign each group one artwork to analyse, and groups could share the artwork and their thoughts with the class once complete. Questions to guide the discussion/analysis can be found on the Student Worksheet.

Digitally distribute or share the images on the Artwork Flashcards with students.

Invite students to look at each image without reading the artist's statement, and to have a discussion around the following (also available on the Student Worksheet):

What do you see in this artwork?
What materials or techniques do you recognise in this artwork?
What issue or challenge do you think the artist behind this artwork is trying to convey? What makes you say that?
What message do you think this artwork is trying to convey? What makes you say that?
How have symbols, colours, techniques or styles been used to convey meaning?
What do you think is the artistic intention of this artwork?
How does this artwork make you feel?

Step 4.

Once complete, students can read the artist's statement and see how their experience of the artwork compares to what the artist was intending. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to interpret art; your history and your interests will affect how you experience an artwork, so your experience will be different to those around you. It is really interesting to note how you respond to the artwork and how and why this might be different to others.

Step 5 (optional).

If students have been working in groups to focus on one artwork, you could ask groups to share their artwork and their thoughts with the class.

Part B: Imagining the future through art

Step 1.

Now invite students to think of a challenge that is important to them. The challenge could be broad or it could be locally based. For example:

Ocean pollution
Climate change
Inequality
Native bees
Litter associated with local fast-food chains
People sleeping rough in our neighbourhood.

You might like to prompt students using these questions:

What problems do you want to help solve?
What amazing possibilities can you see to make the world even better?
Who would you like to help? How?
How do you want to live in the future?

You could do this task by inviting students to work independently to write down any ideas on scraps of paper. You can then collect all the pieces of paper, gather students in a circle around a table, and work together to sort the ideas into themes.

Students can then choose a theme to focus on.

Step 2.

Invite students to form groups based on their theme, limiting the number of students in each group to three or four students.

Each group will then work collaboratively to think about the theme they are focused on, to briefly reflect on any challenges associated with this theme and how these challenges might affect the future. The aim of this exercise is not to dwell on all the potential future problems but instead to ensure that all students understand why this issue might be important and why it needs to be addressed.

Optional: Students could record some keywords that help to explain the challenge, for example, heat waves, declining biodiversity, racism, affordable housing.

Step 3.

Now give each group some butcher's paper and marker pens. Explain that each group will now focus on what dreams and hopes they have for this challenge in the future. Explain that actions (creation) can only come once the ideas have been imagined first. They will record their ideas on the butcher's paper, either in words or doodles, or both.

Students should focus on the statement in the context of the theme they are focusing on: “When I dream of the future, I see…”.

Encourage students to dream big and explain to students that there are no bad ideas and that they should be inspired by what other people in their group are coming up with; all the great designers and artists in the world are inspired by what is happening around them and by what other people are doing. Working together to create our mark for a brighter future will ensure that you come up with more ideas, and you will come up with ideas that address points you might never have considered if you were working alone.

You can also remind students of any ideas for the future that emerged from the artworks viewed earlier and explain that it’s okay to be inspired by what any of these artists have imagined for the future.

Further support:

You could also share the following clips, explaining that these can be used to help tune us into a more positive view of the future:
You could also prompt students with other ideas and visions for the future, such as:
- We use every spare piece of land in our neighbourhood to plant plants that attract and support native bees and we will build bee houses into the bricks of every building
- No one will be allowed to make new plastic and the only plastic anyone is allowed to use is plastic that has been recycled, which means the plastic will become very valuable and everyone will be helping to clean up the land and oceans
- Each apartment block anywhere, old or new, will need to have an apartment on each floor that is available for a person or family who is sleeping rough.

Step 4.

Once groups have had time to come up with and record some ideas, they can share their ideas with the class and encourage students to suggest further ideas to complement the ideas generated by other groups.

Step 5 (optional).

Invite students to put their heads on their desks or lay on the floor. Play the song below and ask them to focus on listening to the lyrics at the start. They can then let their imaginations run wild while they listen - picturing their ideas for a brighter future.

A Million Dreams (The Greatest Showman Soundtrack) (https://open.spotify.com/track/0RoA7ObU6phWpqhlC9zH4Z?si=fc348825a18f412a)

If you don’t have a Spotify account, you could use this YouTube link, but don’t show the video to the students:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkozLmiLBc0

Part C: Create your artwork

Step 1.

Explain that students are going to create an artwork around their dream for the future based on the theme that they explored in their group. They will need to think about how their dream could be turned into an artwork:

This could mean breaking the dream into smaller parts and focusing on just one part.
This could mean thinking carefully about what materials would be best suited to sharing this dream.
This could mean they include themselves in the artwork in some way, either visually or with words. (Remind students that they will also need to submit an artist's statement in support of their artwork so they don’t necessarily NEED to include words within their artwork.)

Step 2.

Explain the details of the competition (find these in the teacher content information section, or on the Create Your Mark for a Brighter Future Creative Competition website).

Note: You will need to submit completed student artworks to the Create Your Mark for a Brighter Future Creative Competition using this link: https://createyourmark.com.au/

Step 3.

Students will need to create a rough draft of their artworks before creating the final version that they will submit to the competition. The aim of the draft is to ensure that the artwork they have in mind addresses the theme and challenge they are focusing on, that it proposes a hopeful vision for the future of this theme/challenge, and that the artwork is interesting and appealing (students are aiming to catch the attention of the judges!).

Allow students the time to create a rough draft of their artwork.

Step 4.

As they work, remind students that this artwork isn’t about creating something perfect - what is important here is the ideas you have and the visions you are sharing. It doesn’t matter if it doesn't work out exactly how you want it to; all the best artists, designers and inventors are always experimenting, trying things out, making mistakes and doing the best they can. However, creating a draft of the artwork you want to produce can help you address some of the visual or structural challenges in the artwork, ensure that your idea is being well communicated and means you can get some feedback from your peers before you submit your artwork to the competition. In addition to improving the quality of your final artwork, this might also increase your chances of winning!

Step 5.

Once complete, invite them to share their draft artwork with a classmate. Students should provide feedback on each other's artworks, remembering to be kind, helpful and specific when providing feedback:

• Be kind - it can be hard sharing your ideas with other people, so make sure you remain kind and supportive.
• Be specific - be clear about what you think and why. Rather than saying “I like your message”, say something like “I like the way you used this technique to emphasise your point”.
• Be helpful - try not to just say what is strong or weak, but also make suggestions about how things could be improved.

Students should focus on reviewing each other's artworks in terms of how effective the artist has been in communicating their message through their artwork. Students could use the following prompts to guide this feedback process:

I think this is an artwork about…
One thing I like about your artwork is…
One thing I’m unsure about is…
One thing I would do to improve your artwork…

Step 6.

Now provide students time to create the final version of their artwork, incorporating feedback from peers where appropriate.

Step 7.

Once students have completed their artworks, they can work independently to write a description (no more than 150 words). Again these can be shared with a peer for feedback (including spelling and grammar).

Artworks can then be photographed or scanned in preparation for submission to the competition.

Part D: Share your artwork

Step 1.

An important part of real-world learning is providing opportunities for students to share their work with a wider audience and to receive feedback.

Students need to work together as a class to create a gallery to share their work with an audience (such as other students and teachers at your school or with parents and families).

Students could divide their gallery into the themes they worked on earlier in this lesson.

The gallery could be in a physical space or online.

Reflection

It is also important for students to reflect on their successes and failures in conceiving and creating their artworks. Invite students to work independently to answer the following questions in writing (also available on the Student Worksheet):

What did you enjoy most about creating your artwork?
How effective do you think you were at communicating your message in your artwork?
If you were to create this artwork again, what might you do differently?
What do you like about envisioning a brighter future?
(Optional) Can you see yourself creating a positive mark on the future one day? How?

Differentiated learning

Extension

Some students may wish to write a full artist statement or tell a story about their artwork. You could extend this further by allowing them to make a speech or presentation, or write a longer creative piece about their artwork.
Some students might be inspired by their artwork to take action. Help them work out what step they could take now to bring their vision closer to reality and work towards creating their mark for a brighter future.

Provisions for learning support

Some students may struggle to create a written description of their artwork. Encourage these children to create a speech or video to describe their artworks.

Teacher reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Create Your Mark Creative Competition (years 5 & 6)

Go to

Summary

Lesson guides and printables

In this lesson