Artist Blog: Joanna Parkes on being a part of The Ark's DCU Artist Residency 2024/25

“I didn’t think I was very creative beforehand but doing it all together made it seem easier and more fun” was the feedback from one of the Postgraduate Students in DCU at the end of a fun and creative session when students and artists collaborated to celebrate the joy of mixing it all up – integrating the skills and ideas of artists, staff and students with music, visual art, drama.

This Integrated Arts project was a partnership project with The Ark and staff and students at DCU. The Ark nominated three artists (Jane Groves, Ríona Sally Hartman and myself) to work with two classes of students doing a Postgraduate Masters in Primary Education. As artists, we were asked to deliver a series of hands-on practical creative and artistic workshops with the students which initially explored the concepts and intrinsic values of each art form on its own and then we all came together in a final event to explore how integrated and interdisciplinary knowledge and creative processes can be blended into new and exciting forms of expression.

Teachers are increasingly encouraged to apply an integrated arts approach, particularly across drama, music and visual art. Separately, there’s a focus on taking a multidisciplinary approach to explore how combining artistic processes encourages children and teachers to appreciate the interconnectedness of creative processes and the arts. In this project with The Ark and DCU, sustainability and biodiversity were additional cross-curricular links.

The students initially participated in a workshop with each artist – focusing on each art form separately, acknowledging that while Art, Drama, and Music share common processes and transferable skills, each has its own knowledge, concepts, skills and intrinsic value which was explored in separate workshops. Then the students in the two classes came together with all three artists and the staff from each discipline for a plenary session which focused on an integrated and multidisciplinary arts approach.

A common theme was chosen to connect the initial three workshops and this theme focused on daily life, nature and biodiversity on a small rural island. As the drama facilitator in this project I asked the students to imagine life on a small island, off the west coast of Ireland where people live close to the land, and with a stronger sense of community and connection. The businesses on the island are connected to tourism and the island’s natural resources such as seaweed, fisheries and farming. As part of the drama the island was hit by a big storm which resulted in rubbish and pollution coming from elsewhere and destroying the island’s beaches and coastline. The islanders then had to work together to address this crisis and the personal and environmental impact of the other people’s actions and behaviour for them and their island community. In the music and visual arts workshops Jane and Ríona used a range of creative activities to encourage the students to explore the potential of using visual art, music, sound, and percussion to recreate similar island environments and stormy conditions.

Bringing it all together

This all led to the final plenary event when everyone came together to see what would happen if we looked to combine the ideas and concepts into a shared celebration. The students were divided into four groups and given access to fabric, materials, paper, card and instruments and asked to represent life on this fictional island after the storm, with each group focusing on a different season.

The Facilitators dilemma – leave them to stew or intervene?

Having been giving their instructions, initially the students sat having quiet conversation in their groups but there was a sense of uncertainty in the room. As artists and facilitators we were asking ourselves, are they struggling?, should we intervene?, are our instructions unclear?, is it too hard a concept for them to understand? We were in that facilitators dilemma – do we leave them in uncertainty for a while or do we intervene? We did of course answer any specific questions they had but by and large we let them sit in uncertainty for a while. Then one group got up and started to explore the fabrics and materials, choosing what they could use to represent their season. This prompted another group to get up and in the next moment they were all up, seeing what they could use, making sure they didn’t leave it too late and there was nothing left to play with. Before long the uncertainty had disappeared and the room was a riot of colour, noise and excitement. Something was happening in every corner of the space and everyone was up and active.

We let them create, explore, investigate and play for about 30 minutes, each group creating their seasonal area and using the combined arts approach to represent life on the island after the storm. When the groups were ready we had a casual, low-focused sharing, making it clear that this is not an end-product or performance but rather a sharing of a moment. We stressed that what was much more important and valuable was the process they went through, how they worked together, how their ideas changed and evolved and how this could be an ongoing process which could unfold over time.

The plenary finished with a question and answer session with the three artists responding to questions the students had previously submitted. The questions showed the students were thinking in very real and practical ways and opened up good conversations about finding time and space for the Arts in the school day, how to negotiate with children who don’t want to engage and how to ensure all voices are heard and that the more confident pupils don’t dominate.

As with all projects where there are many voices to be included and agendas to be considered, there were a couple of bumps in the road to be negotiated along the way. However, there was a clear sense of pleasure and satisfaction from everyone involved at the end of the plenary event. Reviewing all aspects of the project it was clear that, in line with the aims of the Arts Curriculum, the students had the opportunity to express themselves creatively and meaningfully, to mix things up and integrate various artistic processes, to sit and think for a while and work through uncertainty, to experience how by focusing on the process than performance ideas emerge and evolve to become something that represents a moment but could also continue to change and expand, endlessly transforming as everyone makes a suggestion and gets their voices heard. Hopefully this experience will encourage the students to use their own creative skills, thoughts and ideas to express themselves in the classroom and help them recognise how their work in the arts can positively contribute to the world around them and the children they will encounter as teachers throughout their careers.