Portrait by Jazmin Dervishalli
Mr Lyndon, who has been teaching at the preschool in Kerala, is shown our students work.We were given a project by our teacher, Ms Ashman, based on working with a pre-school for children with Special Educational Needs in Kerala, India. The project brief was to create a portrait of a child from the school. This project was really a once in a life time experience, to interact by using our art with children in India who find it hard to interact with others around them. Although this was a challenging project, because the information about the children was not extremely detailed and we had not been able to meet them, it was still a brilliant way to understand and be able to highlight a person’s personality on a canvas.
To present our portraits to the community we put together an exhibition in the Conference Room at TRS on the 8th May 2009. We created leaflets and posters to advertise the event to our fellow pupils, teachers and family members. To create an Indian atmosphere we decided add Indian refreshments to serve on the night. Sarah Moss, Year 12 brought in ingredients to create an Indian drink called ‘Mango Lassie’ and small nibbles. A Powerpoint was put together showing photographs of the children and of us, this shows the culture differences between us and the children. We also put up and arranged the portraits and project work in the Conference Room for display. This exhibition was a great success as we could share our work to the community and communicate with others about the children from the school. The amount of teachers and family members who showed great interest in the work was truly supportive and encouraging. All the comments given by the visitors were extremely positive especially from Mr Lyndon, who spent 3 months with the children in the school and sent us all the information on the children including bibliographies, photographs and even some examples of the children’s art work.
On behalf of the year 12 BTEC Art and Design National Diploma class, I would like to thank everyone who attended the exhibition and our teachers for supporting our class and giving us an amazing experience.
Philippa Williams, Year 12
