Tag Archives: 5postcards

andy
January 10, 2013

my REAL wall and Stripygoose present 5 postcards 2013 (Introduction lecture wall)

Stripygoose and Andytgeezer present 5 Postcards 2013

2013-01-09 12.14.23

Over the years, I’ve been getting involved with mailart shows and projects with my REAL wall and it’s been such a hoot. Some shows and projects are now going into their second year, which I think is very flattering and this is one of those projects. 5 postcards was a project dreamt up by me and a lecturer at my university, Sue. I have always liked mixing business and pleasure and believe deeply in the educational benefit of tangible objects being exchanged between people, which is why I set up Schoolswaps.

We wanted to use postcards to get students thinking about school experiences. The idea was to get students to think of 5 incidents that happened to them in school, either as students or as teachers, that stuck with them. They then have to create 5 postcards illustrating these experiences.

Last year, the postcards blew us away. We were taken on quite a journey and found that the exercise really opened students up and got them expressing themselves. In the end we even collated all the postcards into a book, which we distributed to the students and done all sorts of extra work as it was such a thrill.

As a result of all this excitement, Sue signed up for Mailart 365 and has been steadily creating all year.

Oh yeah and on the subject of MA365…

I MADE IT! I just completed today!

365

Aaaaaanyway…Todays REAL walls come from the introductory lesson to this years project. It’s a new class with new students but we wanted to build on last years success and do it again. So in todays lesson, Sue and I brought out some mailart from our collections. On the wall you can see some of the mailart that I’ve received since the last time I posted mingled among some of Sue’s own collection. I’ve never actually rifled through Sue’s collection and I have sent her one or two pieces. It was quite strange to see my works again that I had sent off but always a pleasure to see artists that I know in her collection, like Cornpone and Mim and she recognised works from Suus in Mokum and Rebecca in my collection.

Artists that Sue had never seen from my collection include Hope. There’s lots of post from Hope, who’s artwork I always adore. She’s an artist I will tell you time and again that you should subscribe to, because her letterpress is AWESOME!

Students picked out favourites from Angie and Snooky and Boo Cartledge as well as saying they loved Sue’s style.

So now the students have to go away and think about their experiences and start their creative process. I can’t wait to see what they create!

andy
July 6, 2012

my REAL wall presents – The Portrait Room

Following the success of the 5 postcards show, I was asked by the head of the department I look after, Education to put up the postcards in one of our most prestigious rooms in the university, the Portrait Room for an Education department meeting.

Me and Sue were superbly excited by the chance to get that sort of exposure, as the whole department we work for would get a chance to see our project, a project we strongly believe in. So we took the postcards down from where they were in room 122 in the library, and moved them all across to the Portrait Room in the morning.

With 230 cards, we managed to fill the entire room, and it looked AMAZING.

So, with a real sense of accomplishment after spending the whole morning posting the postcards on the wall, we slipped off to lunch.

When we arrived back, we found that some jobsworth properties/estates person had removed all the cards. Apparently the building is a listed building and no blu-tac was allowed on the wood panelling. Hmmmm Thanks. We were going to take them down straight after the meeting. Now, with 20 minutes before the meeting started, we had the task of getting all 230 cards back on the windows, and the cards were now a mess.

We were fuming.

We did manage to do it with a few extra hands, but ultimately the effect was lost and we had to live with the postcards no longer having the impact we expected. Sue has a much more pragmatic attitude than I do (I just wanted to punch someone in the face) and assured me that the unexpected does happen and we need to accept these things sometimes. I still want to punch someone in the face.

The presentation went pretty well and some of the lecturers were really inspired by what we had to say about postcards in education, so we were grateful for the exposure even though some things did go wrong, but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes

andy
June 27, 2012

my REAL wall presents… 5 Postcards exhibition, mailart call and website!

Regular readers of the blog will know that I like to mix business and pleasure and this week I was at it again. As you may know I work at the University of Roehampton as the e-learning advisor to the department of Education. Earlier this year, one of the lecturers in my department, Sue came to me and asked for a hand designing a reflective activity for her course.

The course was delivered to 2 sets of students – one set were leaving teaching, and the other set were entering teaching. The aim of the activity was to get students to think about their experience of school, and to reflect on how their school experience had influenced their lives.

Initially, being higher education, the assignment was a single 1000 word essay on an incident that happened to them that stood out from their school years, but Sue and I both realised that there was something not quite right about this activity.

So we sat down, thought through it and totally redesigned the activity. Instead of a wordy essay on a single incident, we opted to make postcard sized images representing 5 incidents from their school years, either as teachers or as pupils. The postcards were not assessed themselves, as that would have been unfair on the non-artists, but the students had to follow up the postcards with a 200 word writeup on each one.

Given the sensitive nature of the memories, we had to ensure that the students would feel safe to share their experiences and the use of images instead of words was one way that we achieved this. Using images the students were able to use icons and abstraction to build up their narrative, effectively telling their stories often without the need for words. Images were an excellent vehicle for expression of the emotive nature of these events.

In order to maintain this safety, we had another idea up our sleeves. When the students came in to the lesson, we had a postbox by the door and students dropped the cards into a postbox and went for coffee while Sue and I put the cards on the wall.

When they returned, they were told that if they wanted to share the story of their experience with the class they could come up, point to their card and tell the story. This way the students were able to abstain if they wished.

We heard some great stories, some really inspiring ones, some horrible stories and some totally unexpected ones too, like the one about the teacher who called his student Bob for a year.

Students fed back that this unusual activity was one of the most memorable and thought provoking activities that they had ever done.

The exhibition collected together all 230 postcards from all 46 students in both clases. I hand stamped all the labels and scanned each one personally and made them into a book too for the students to see.

The opening event in the library building was wonderful fun and was attended by teachers, teacher trainers and parents with their children as well as other members of the public and Sue provided the postcard-themed snacks and cakes.

Me and Sue are available for consultation on the use of postcards in teaching and learning, so if you are interested in using post in your classroom do get in touch and also check out my REAL wall’s educational offshoot Schoolswaps

This project was the most fun and thought-provoking educational project I’ve run this year, and we wanted to continue to investigate the 5 postcards experiences with YOU – the rest of the world. We couldn’t contain our excitement about it so we went out and bought www.5postcards.com and launch our first joint mailart call to the rest of the world.

The challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to illustrate 5 incidents that you can remember from school, using any media that you wish that will fit in the post 5 postcards. Once you’ve done this, just send them to us, either straight to the blog or in the post by going to this address http://5postcards.com/submit-your-5-postcards-here/ and we’ll share your 5 postcards with the world.