All throughout my life, art has been the one thing keeping me at bay, and I could easily say that art has always been a very deep form of expression that I have deeply fallen in love with over a period of time, and in MYP through the subject of AS(arts special) I had been able to perform this passion of mine regularly, however with the pandemic entering our lives and the new year starting online, this subject was sidelined, and I began to feel like I wasn’t able to give arts as much time as before and that was something I hated. Soon I discovered that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way, a couple other of my peers, whom I know are fond of the subject like I am, felt the same way. And our group joined and formed our school’s art club. A place for us to freely do what we all loved together, with the added opportunity of feeding off of each other’s areas of expertise.
From theories, ideas, technicalities to practical work, our club was a safe space to discuss, learn about and try on endless different artforms whenever we could. Instead of having a fixed curriculum, our club had a more flexible system where we took up topics based on ideas or artforms randomly, and however ought to know the most about that particular topic, or was willing to research about it, took over that particular session. We explored artforms like black out poetry, tie and dye, and worked on intriguing topics such as “brown culture”. Not only did these club sessions help me channel my artistic mind into some practical work but also opened up my mind to so many different perspectives that come with art, it was a great platform to understand not only what art is, but also the parts of myself that give birth to it.
LO 1: Identify their own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.
As I had been practicing art for a while now, I was fairly aware of my basic strengths and weaknesses, for example, I was better at conceptual work than I was at realistic. However, practicing art individually, and practicing art in a group are two very different experiences. In the club I realised, that even though I had strong ideas, views and concepts, and even though I was able to put them on paper, communicating them verbally was something challenging for me, and while verbal communication or public speaking isn’t a part of ‘arts’ as a subject, it’s crucial to the essence of a ‘club’ which primarily runs on thought processes. To overcome this weakness, I used opportunities this club provided me with, for example, I co-led one of the sessions, which helped me open up and confidently express and speak my mind with the set of people I was working with. And I realised that even though I felt as though verbal communication wasn’t a part of arts, sharing and communicating my ideas with my peers, actually deepened my visions, and gave multitudes of opportunities for me to explore my ideas through several lenses, which would as a result, make me a better artist.
LO 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
Managing time and working out schedules was a big challenge I faced in this club. Since this club was quite flexible and we scheduled sessions, according to common consensus rather than with fixed days and timings,it became difficult to find such time slots when everyone was available, given that all of us had different subjects and thus different timetables. However we picked out common free periods or days like sundays to schedule are sessions, and if in case someone was unavailable we made sure to record our sessions, so the absentee could at least be up to date with whatever we learnt together. Another challenge was to select topics that were interesting for a diverse crowd, because some topics appealed to a set of artists, but didn’t to others, which is okay, however as a club member, I believe it was my responsibility, as much as anyone else’s’ to make sure the sessions felt engaging enough for everyone to be able to take away at least something from it after giving it a good amount of time from their schedules. It was necessary that everyone felt included, and that we had fruitful discussions, which we tried our level best to, and succeeded to an extent as well, although the online platform and varied sets of interests made it challenging at times, but that’s what working with people of different kinds brings.
LO 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.
Like mentioned before, more than just art, this club was to teach all of us how to SHARE art, share perspectives, ideas, skills, and learnings to create better art. To do so, it was obvious that we needed to collaborate as a group of 12 members that we were, and that needed patience and acceptance. For a lot of times ideas collided, we wouldn’t set up a particular time for our meet, or had a quarrel deciding what topic to best take upon next, and to deal with all of that and have a productive session, a mutual respect needed to be developed, which I believe we all did, over time. Being open-minded was extremely crucial, because art brings up topics close to home, topics that are socially diverse, or politically unsafe, but art is about expression, and no matter what a peer would express or say, we needed to be open minded enough to accept that without judgement. Being principled was also quite necessary, since art often takes time, and not all of our work would get over in the allotted time of a single session, so it would be our personal responsibilities to complete what we had started in our personal time. And lastly, being a risk-taker was I believe the most important factor of it all, art is seeking out your wild side, and if we didn’t build up the courage to explore a challenging and new artform or work on a foreign topic from time to time, I don’t think anyone of us would learn or grow as artists.
To conclude, this club was a truly amazing experience that helped me stretch out of my comfort zone and strengthen my skills in something I dearly adore. I feel as though this club helped me grow as a better artist, and a more open-minded, introspective person. It also allowed me to provide service to my peers by teaching them a skill I was very well acquainted with-blackout poetry.
Art Club Evidence