Jo Allen and Rachael Causer: Relief Printmaking at Ridgefield Primary School

Artist educators, Jo Allen and Rachael Causer, were invited to take inspiration from the 40 Artist Educator Project Resources and deliver an all day workshop at Ridgefield Primary School, Cambridge for year five pupils.

This was part of evaluating the ACE funded 40 Artist Educator Project and gaining insight as to how artists use and adapt AccessArt resources to feed their own teaching and practice.

To see more about 40 Artist Educator Project and its evaluation, have a look at the 40 Artist Educator Evaluation Space.

Many thanks to Ridgefield Primary School for hosting the session and a heart felt thanks to Class 5 and their wonderful teacher Kayleigh Timmis for going for it and producing such out standing work!

Introduction by Jo Allen and Rachael Causer

We were inspired by Claire Louise Mather’s amazing 40 Artist Educator resource Responding to Place, and drew upon elements of it as starting point for our own project.

We loved the focus on research and observational drawing but decided to take the project in a slightly different direction by getting the students to create imaginary buildings from photographs of Cambridge.

We showed them the work of photographer Philip Dujardin, which inspired an interesting discussion about architecture, its physicality and the way we inhabit buildings.

We wanted our project to involve a very open-ended exploratory mark and printmaking session that would allow students to explore texture, tone and colour to produce a wide range of papers to college with later. It was important that the emphasis was on experimentation, encouraging the students to take risks and enjoy exploring through process.

We loved the way Claire got the students to layer their line drawing with collaged buildings underneath, and drew from this part of her project. After making trace drawings of their imagined buildings, the students used their textured papers to collage underneath their line drawings, layering flat areas of pattern, texture and tone to their building, exploring the relationship between line, tone and form.

Part One:

Pupils at Ridgefield Explore Paint, Texture and Mark-Making

Making Textured Rubbings

Using Relief Printing to Make Textured Paper

Using Paint to Mix Colours and Explore Mark Making

Part Two:
Introducing Collage and the Work of Artist Filip Dujardin

Part Three:
Inspired by Claire Louise Mather’s Responding to Place to Trace, Transfer and Transform

Part Four:
Creating the Final Piece – Using Textured Papers (from the Morning Session) to Create a New Building

Finished Work – A New Cambridge Townscape

“When we were asked by Accessart to run a workshop inspired by one of the 40 artist educator posts, we were spoilt for choice. We both loved Claire’s project and were intrigued by the many possibilities it suggested. For us as freelance practitioners, Accessart is an incredibly rich and diverse resource with so many inspirational ideas all in one place. We were able to take elements of Claire’s wonderful resource and build on it to create a project we were really proud of.” Jo Allen and Rachael Causer

Many thanks to Loren Mccarthy for beautifully capturing the day.