4th WorkShop at St.Christophers

Our forth workshop at St.Christophers was really for us to just gather all the last bits and bobs that we shall be needing for the presentation for the Celebration Day. Bradley went around getting the patients to give an introduction for their story which shall be placed before their animation clip we made from them. Dean and I helped the patients to create flags from their country and one of their own which will be put up alongside the presentation boards. Lucus and Teddy were working on posters to go up aswell. Anna and Josie were doing self portraits. The only thing missing now the actual performance and the end of the anticipation and the viewing of the animation made by us.

Ron's hidden talent!- self portrait workshop

Fourth Workshop

We started the fourth workshop with all of our materials prepared. Lee and myself got straight on with making the bunting, making flags of the different ethnic groups at the Hospice. First of all we sat down with Fred and he helped us make the Irish flag and the Guyanan flag. Lee and myself had already prepared the Union Jack and the Jamaican flag which seemed to impress Ron. Ron then created his own flag (peace and love), Jill also created her own flag that we all made out of different coloured card. The session rounded to a close leaving piles of work accomplished. For the rest of the week I am going to finish the bunting and finish editing my animation.

The Last Workshop!

I really enjoyed the workshop today! We set up four mini stations where the patients could get involved in different types of activities, this included self portraits, flag making, painting and video storytelling!... This style of workshop was a good change that ment the patients were able to experience a variety of activities, and also allowed us students to work with, and get to know the patients that we hadnt previously communicated with!
Josie and I asked the patients interview style questions and managed to get some great quotes (see josie's post) to write up and display on celebration day. We then put our mirrors and markers to use, and created some fabulous self portraits to combine with the quotes to give the display a really personal and creative touch!

4th Visit to St. Christopher's

Today was the 4th workshop at St. Christopher's, we were creating work for our Celerbration Day on the 1st July. Ted and I designed some posters in black and white relating to wartime to tie in the with the D-Day type decorations, so some of the patients could colour them in so they could add their own little bit to the posters. We used water colours because they are quite an easy medium to work with and I like the light colour wash with them also. I am pleased with the outcome of today, we got alot of posters done to display on Celebration day.

Workshop 4

In today's workshop, Anna and I gathered some feedback from the patients on their time spent working with the BRIT students.

Nora said ; "It was good, the students were really easy to talk to."

Ron said ; "It's good to see younger people working with older people as the younger generation are sometimes misunderstood. You have to understand that this is a changed world where youth have new problems to face."

Annette said ; "I've enjoyed meeting all of you. Its good to have something different to take my mind off of my illness. Thank you!"

We also asked everyone to draw a self portrait, which everyone one was reluctant to do, but they came out really well! We'll be putting them onto display boards for everyone to see next Wednesday!

Workshop 4

Today we got the chance to have some fun with the patients at St. Christopher's. The previous weeks we had been focused on completing the necessary tasks in order to make our animations, so this week it was nice to do something different with the patients, making preparations for celebration day next week. Different students were set up different stations doing different activities. My task was to film a brief summary of the patients telling their stories, which could then be used to introduce the animations, as through some of the animations, it may be difficult to understand the story. This was one of my favorite things we have done at St Christopher's. All of the patients were able to sit in front of the camera and openly talk about their stories, some emotional ones, which was great as some people can find it difficult being filmed. The result is fantastic: clear and concise introductions from the patients, which is going to make the animations shown on celebration day even better!

3rd workshop at St Christiphors

The 3rd workshop at St Christiphors we worked with the patients to draw some of our stories, i was working with Jill . I had never worked with her before, she drew very fast so we got a good amount of drawing to transform into an animation. Next week we want to show the patients some of the animations we have been working on in the week and try and get some sound bytes to put into a installation that will be shown at Celebration Day.

St Christopher's 3rd Workshop

The workshop started like the previous ones with us all in a circle. We had a quick discussion about the work we had been doing over the week. We then shared all the animations through a projector connected to a lap top. Everyone seemed pleased with the portrayal of their stories, especially Fred who thoroughly enjoyed our animation. We then broke off into smaller groups, Lee and myself being with Fred again. We began working on the stories we had told them last time, mine being about the time I took my snake on the train up to Great Ormond Street Hospital, because my consultant kept asking me to, as he was an avid snake fan. I then drew out key points of my story wth a light pencil and Fred then drew over these with a fine liner and inks. This helped Fred gain confidence with drawing and by the end of the session he was drawing free hand. I have taken away many resources from todays session and have a lot to work with over the coming week. It should be really fun working with the new animations.

Third Week Workshop Response

Since working at the hospice I have learnt many things, the last week in particular, was very influential, we told the patients stories about our personal experiences which they then drew with our help, in different types of pen, pencil and ink. I really enjoyed this because it was interactive and I got to know Annette, the person i was helping, a lot better. At first Annette was shy to draw but with my help we soon produced something. I enjoyed the fact it was a collaborative effort.

Discovering Nora's Drawing Skills!

In my opinion, today's workshop was the most productive day yet! Josie and I spent the morning illustrating our story with Nora, resulting in enough images and backgrounds to start our animation! To start, Nora was quite reluctant to draw as she didn't want to make a mistake, however, after a pep talk and some practice, we discovered Nora was quite nifty with a bamboo nib and some ink! Especially when Fiat Punto's and brick walls are involved!... very impressed!

3rd Workshop St. Christophers Hospice

The start of today's workshop was set out like most of the others. Roberto introduced the group and then we showed our small animations on a lap top projector. It was great to finally show all the patients their stories and Fred particularly liked his. After the showing of animations was over we had a quick feedback session. We then broke off into our groups as usual, me and Lee being with Fred again. Like the previous week we were sharing our stories with them. Mine being about the time I took my snake on the train up to Great Ormond Street Hospital, as my consultant loved snakes. Fred found this story rather amusing. I then drew the key points of the story, which Fred then drew over. This helped him gain confidence with drawing and by the end of the session he was drawing free hand.

Animation Preview

Annette's Apple Tree

Third Workshop at St Christopher's

Our aim for today's workshop was to get the patients to draw stories that we shared with them about our experiences of our childhood and teenage years. We needed them to make these narrative drawings so that we can make an animation out of them. So we really were sewing the gap between our teenage hood and theirs! Surprsingly, it was not as hard to get them to draw this week as it was last week! I think it was because we built a method of drawing the out line first so they patients could draw over it in pen or an ink tool. We got alot of material and i am excited to see what we come up with.....

Plan for Next Workshop

Throughout the days leading up to our next workshop at St Christophers, we will be bringing to life the drawings the patients did of our stories during today's workshop. The imagery we've gathered from the patients has a lot of personality and it should be a lot of fun turning them into animations together. The next workshop we will hopefully be showing them parts of the animations we are creating this week. They will be in black and white, using the illustrations we created together with the patients. I think it will be really exciting to see how we can fuse the patients' drawing talents with the animation skills we have learnt to bring our stories to life.

Workshop 3 and Plans for Next Week!

Today we had our third visit to St. Christopher's Hospice. This week we asked the patients to draw our stories. I was working with a woman named Gladys who was a bit reluctant to draw at first, but when she got into it she was amazing, documenting my story using a range of different materials. I can now take the drawings she did and construct an animation around them over the next two weeks, which we can share on our celebration day. Next week in the workshop we will be working with the patients, creating presentations, displays and decorations etc, all of which we can display on celebration day. As mentioned before, the theme is around London, using colours such as red, white and blue. We have a few ideas to be working on with the patients next week such as making bunting, and creating sound bites of the different stories to display as an interactive sound piece on our final sharing.

Sneaky Peek at Workshop 3

This is us working with the residents on drawings that illustrate our stories. We are going to be turning them into animations in the next couple of weeks.

Second Workshop at St Christopher’s Hospice

We began the workshop as a whole group and re introduced ourselves to the new patients who had joined us. We had a showing of a segment of an animation made by Dean of ‘Fred’s’ story. The story is autobiographical and tell’s the tale of Fred’s evacuation during WWII and his return to London by sea, where he was met with devastation and the death of close family members. Fred seemed really pleased with the section that he saw, which included the evacuation, the fighter planes and the bomb shelter.
This week we had to share our own stories to the resident’s of the Hospice. One lady, called Frida, who was probably in her late seventies remarked how she could not undestand why todays teenagers were so violent and invoved in gangs. This sparked a debate between us which was intriging. We learnt a lot about perspective and she believes that what happens to young people now will effect them when they are older. Frida was a very positive and a very open minded lady. She grew up in the contryside which has now become very built up.
This second workshop was much more comfortable than the first. Everyone seemed much more relaxed and confident.

Workshop Number 2

At our second workshop at St. Christopher’s Hospice, we began by displaying and discussing the work we had created based on last week’s workshop. We were introduced to new faces, and then we broke off into groups to begin sharing our stories. This week the patients had a chance to draw our stories, whereas last week we drew theirs. This week I was working with a woman called Jackie, a new addition to our group. She was extremely talkative and enthusiastic, very eager to share her own exciting experiences. She had a fantastic general knowledge, often saying that she was, in her own words, educating me. I told her we were visual arts and design students from The Brit School to which she replied ‘there’s no money in that is there’. When it came to her drawing my story, she was very reluctant to put pencil to paper, claiming that she was ‘no good at that arty farty stuff’. After some persuasion, I managed to get her to draw an image from my story, which was great because at first she didn’t want to do anything. On the other hand, she gave me some great stories to illustrate and work with to create a future animation. It was great working with her because she was so funny; hopefully next week I can persuade her to do some more drawings.

School Dinners and Homework!

Today was our 2nd workshop at St.Christopher's. It was nice to see that more patients arrived and wanted to be part of the project, allowing us to work in larger, less intimidating groups. We sat in groups of 2 students, and two or three patients. This was just as intimate as one on one, however the conversations developed into a detailed and more light hearted approach to telling stories, with more opinions and patient to patient communication. I enjoyed listening to Nora, Hazel and Jill, as they described their fondest, and worst memories of being at school. This also gave me and Josie a chance to compare our experiences, and discuss with the patients how much education and teaching approaches have changed over the years. This resulted in an amusing rant about school dinners and homework, and an emotional discussion about bullying and punishment, such as disturbing memories that including suffering the cane! I learnt a lot from the patients, and hope i gave them an enjoyable experience of learning new drawing skills!

Patient Response to Animations So Far

Today we showed the patients samples of our animations so far, which they seemed to respond really well to. It took a while for them to understand the way in which we are animating the illustrations, as we are using a variation of styles and methods. They seemed to appreciate the effort and time we put into the work and enjoyed flicking through the imagery on the digital cameras. We dicscussed putting music to the love story Anna is animating, perhaps the song played at their wedding, which they danced the quickstep to. We recieved some really positive feedback and the patient whose story it is was excited to see the finished animation next week.

The second visit to St Christopher’s

We visited the hospice for the second time today. The first thing I found was that it was much easier to talk to the residents because we had already met some of them and we had got to know them a little bit. Also , we showed them some animations of the stories that they had shared with us even though they where still being worked on. Some of the patients I was working with had never drawn much before in there lives. This was a little weird for us because we were so much younger and we ended up teaching them how to do it. When they got into it I think they really enjoyed it . I think we got some great drawing done by the residents for us to turn into an animation.

Plan for Workshop 2

On Wednesday we plan to share our personal experiences of youth in London with the patients at St Christopher’s Hospice. We will be asking them to illustrate the stories we tell and we will animate them back at college. This will be a good chance to build up a friendship with the patients as we will be comparing our stories with their stories. It is a good chance to learn about how times have changed and how London has changed too. To make the animations different to each other, our stories will be animated in black and white and the patients’ stories will be animated in sepia tones. They will be using inks and pens to illustrate our stories. We are looking forward to seeing the patients again and perhaps seeing some new faces in amongst them. We’re also really excited to see how the patients will react to our stories, and how different or similar they are due to the different times we are living in.

Josie and Lulu

Plans for Celebration Day

To mark the end of our residency at St. Christopher's, we will be holding a 'celebration day' on the 1st of july where we will exhibit the collabrative work between us and the patients. The theme is around London, street party, bunting etc combined with modern day technology, with a colour scheme of red, white and blue with gold. We will display our final animations, based around the theme 'Teenagers in London: Yesterday and Today', supported by visuals and sound bites of the stories. This week we have been discussing ideas about how to present our work on 'celebration day'. We have been thinking about using an old-fashioned telephone to exhibit the sound bites, projection of a street to give the feel of a street party, festival, celebration etc. In preparation for the event we will be creating our animations, visiting the hospice to perform workshops and regularly update the patients on our progress.
Bradley, Anna, Ellie

St. Christopher’s Proposals!

Today we all had to put together and present a proposal to our mentor as if we were really proposing to the St. Christopher’s governors. It was quite an intense couple of hours creating what we needed to propose. We needed to gather all the information we knew, prepare it, and practice it so that when it came to presenting it we'd deliver the information precisely and eloquently. Later on we all gathered in the computer room where we were to present. The nerves were beginning to rattle us and the smell of competition was filling the air . The first group went up. This was Josie and Lucas. Their presentation was very detailed touching on every point. This got the other groups worried. The second group went, this was Dean and Lee. Their presentation was more verbal than written down. They used PowerPoint to accompany their presentation and to remind them of what was needed to be said. Then finally, the last group went up, this was Anna, Bradley and Ellie. Their proposal was all done on presentation boards. They gave their speech as we looked at a neat cluster of images and writing, accompanied by a patriotic union jack. In the end all proposals were put the message across in a correct sublime order. The class mentor was impressed and pleased most probably with her self as well. On top of this we all took away a little piece of experience that will help us in the future when it comes to doing proposals and even job interviews!

See more...

See more images of our visits, workshops and classroom developments on our St Christopher's Community Project FlickR page.

Comments from the BRIT School Senior Management Team

"Living history and art as one. Can’t wait to see it develop."
Stuart Worden

"Indeed, what splendid insight into the world that is, St. Christopher’s!"
Lloyd Marshall

"I like the student’s observation that it was a ‘distraction from reality’ of illness, and I’m sure it goes deeper and that having attention paid really contributes to feeling better for a while." Jacqui Pick

Day 1 At The Hospice

Today was my first day doing a workshop at St. Christoher’s Hospice. I didn’t know what to expect so i approached the exerience with an open mind. The activity we took part in was to help us get to know the patients. We engaged in a conversation with them in order to share stories of the patient’s past and illustrated it on paper. This was difficult in the sense that i was drawing from my imaginatation, trying to visualise the stories in my head, which i found hard and on top of that it was extremly difficult to hear the patient at times as they spoke very quietly. But all in all i think it was a great experience for both us and the patients and i look forward to next week’s workshop.

FIRST DAY AT ST. CHRISTOPHER’S HOSPICE

I really feel that working with the patients at St. Christopher’s has given me a great insight into the past and present of London and some of it’s residents. I like how there are still many similarities between the London i know and the London the the patient’s remember. We started by introducing ourselves to each other as the patients were also meeting for the first time and we also discussed the project. We were then put into small groups with the patients and they started telling us memroble stories that we then drew. It was really nice to meet all the patients who were more than happy to share there stories.The stories varied from funny upbeat love storys to sad memorable war storys, it was very emotional at times and we all appreciated their time. I am very excited about creating an animation around the story I was told.

First Workshop Response

The first day i think went really well, I thought it may be hard and very upsetting working with the patients but it turned out to be really enjoyable. The patients were really helpful by telling me some really good storys about their youth to illistrate. At times i found it hard to hear as a patient spoke very quietly so i had to really listen carefully, this made the experience more intimate and personal. At first i found it hard to think of questions to ask her but once we developed a diolouge it became much more comfortable and natural. The patients seemed to be very happy and enjoyed talking about themselves and were also really intrested hearing storys about me.

response to the first day at the hospice

I think the first day at St Christopher’s went well, we meet some of the patients we were going to be working with in this project and started to listen to their stories about growing up and moving to England and we started sketching the narratives out. I thought it was going to be difficult working with them knowing that they are ill. I was worried it was going to be really emotional. It was a much more pleasant experience than I expected. The lady I was speaking to spoke about coming to London from South America and how strange the country felt to her. She remembered the shock of the winter and how beautiful the spring was. I really enjoyed illustrating her stories and showing them back to her.

The First Workshop

Today we had our first workshop with the patients at St. Christopher’s, where we tried to document a story from their life in the form of an animation. I met a man named Ron, who was very eager to share his stories, which was great, although this left me little time to do the actual drawing! In the group it was great to talk to each other about our past experiences and dicuss histories, as it distracted us from the reality that he was ill, and we were just able to enjoy being normal people. We all talked about London and how it has changed over the years. Ron was so enthusiastic and charismatic. It was a great experince for me as I learnt a lot from Ron, and for him I hoped I had given some enjoyment, having fun talking to a new face. I felt very humbled by talking to him.

Reactions to the first workshop

Working with the patients for the first time was a very interesting experience. I was suprised to find that it was really enjoyable listening to thier stories, and found out that i could relate to aspects of their lives that they described. I had no idea the patients would be so open to discuss quite personal, unique and in some cases, traumatic experiences, and felt more emotional than i had expected. Today has highlighted how the workshops will help us, as students, to develop our communication skills, and understanding of different situations of other people. Furthermore, it will allow the patients to experience the oppourtunity to work with a younger generation intersted in their childhood, and also express their emotions on various subjects, such as growing up in london. This also gave us inspiration to make the most out of our time at St Christophers, and as a result, giving the patients something to be proud to show their families and friends.

Response to Day One

Today was our first art workshop at St Christopher’s Hospice. I think everyone went in quite nervous and not really knowing what to expect, but it actually went really well and everyone, both patients and students, seemed to open up quite a bit. We shared some really personal stories about our experiences of growing up in England and it was really interesting to learn about different cultures and times. I enjoyed working in the smaller groups with one patient, as it was not so intimidating for us or them. I found that I made a real connection with the patient Anna and I worked with and found it fascinating to hear what an exciting life she has led. I think that this project will be really beneficial, not only for the hospice patients, but for us too, as it is a chance to learn about how life in London and youth used to be. It’s a chance for us to document the amazing experiences the patients have had and to be a little more selfless with the art we create, thinking more about the people we are creating it for, rather than just what we want to do.