Last term, Year 6 were engaged in an Artist in Residency Program with three street artists from the professional street art company, Outlines. The residency experience is designed to enrich our students learning by creating real life links in providing the opportunity to work with practising artists. The staff from Outlines shared not only their wonderful skills and knowledge of stencilling and spray techniques with our students, but also invited them into deep thinking conversations and debates around what is art. Questions included … What is the political or social origin of Street Art? Who is its audience? What is it communicating?

The program also created the opportunity for probing questions to be asked in their inquiry unit Citizenship & Governance around topics such as … Is graffiti art or vandalism and what is the difference between the two?

During the program, our students developed an idea of something they would like to communicate to the world. They worked on creating a simple image that they felt could communicate this and learnt how to make stencils using the islands and bridges technique. They then experimented with various spray techniques to complete a skate board as their final artwork.

Anah Creet, Junior School Visual Arts Teacher