Terra Firma Stories
Terra Firma Stories is a collaborative project involving King Edward Girls School and Handsworth Home Ed Forest School group working in partnership with @blackartsforum and @lapworthmuseum.
The programme explored the vast collections, creating artwork based on objects that inspired them. The King Edward Girls group used the collections to explore themes around identity, mythology, the body and connections to the Commonwealth.
The artists, @joycetreasure and @olab2 and @paulinebaileyarts produced artwork in response to participants' engagement with the collection, which will also feature as part of the exhibition.
Photograph @paulinebaileyarts
In response to The Commonwealth Games, the Students from King Edward VI Girls School created characters using a method that was part of their existing curriculum: ‘Exquisite Corpse’, or ‘Cadavre Exquis’. The process assembles images using varied compositions that make up a whole. Principal theorist of Surrealism, André Breton, reported that it started as fun but became a playful and enriching method.
The girls were encouraged to consider their sketches created during their trip to the museum and how the geographical materiality could be a segue to broader elements regarding their identity and relationship to the Commonwealth. Each section of each piece responds to different ideas of belonging that have been used for the final installation.
I worked with girls from different years over 2 - 3 sessions, from year 12 to lower-sixth form, working with figurative form ranging from mythological creatures, notions of animism and cultural identity.
