I Am Curious – Teachers and Schools Welcome Resource
Tate London Schools and Teachers team support young people to engage with art, artists and ideas as a way of learning about their own and others’ experience of being in the world, encouraging schools and teachers to understand art to have a social function. POCC Studios worked alongside Primary Art Consultant Emily Gopaul to concept and design ‘I am Curious’ a paper based ‘Welcome Resource’, to support school visits to Tate Modern and Tate Britain. Filled with exciting activities, students are encouraged to engage with art on their own terms, the resource was designed to encourage greater engagement and interaction with the art spaces.
The team curated the child-friendly content of the resource, before designing and artowrking the visual identity of the 12-page booklet. Information labels clearly mark the histories and context behind the work on show at Tate; however, there’s always more to the story. Each student’s curiosity will lead them on a journey through the galleries, reflecting on their views, opinions, and understandings to encounter the art they see with confidence.
Opening with a page for students to personalise and make their own by adding themselves into the illustrated crowd, it aims to ground student’s within the gallery space, building their confidence to skilfully engage with the Tate collection.
Looking: There’s no one way to view art. Simple, multi-sensory prompts encourage students to explore their surroundings with their whole body before moving on to look out for shapes, patterns and words during their visit. A built-in viewfinder encourages the students to focus in on artworks, looking for key details and things within the collection that stand out to just them. What might they find that no one else could?
Making: From movement and collaborative conversation to moments of quiet reflection, each page of this workbook has plenty of space for students to play, make, and create. The class can practice their observational drawing skills in new, exciting ways – including onto the illustrations – and generate ideas to also make art of their own.
Thinking: By recording their observations in this workbook, students will build ideas that they can return to in the classroom and at home, developing their critical thinking skills and making links with their own art practices. I Am Curious is intentionally expansive, and can be adapted for any artist, theme, or movement teachers might be looking at with their students.
