Hello folks, it’s the last time you’re going to be hearing from us… we’re at the “last” day of CFE and we spent most of it as our prep day for tomorrow.

Jessie

I feel excited and I’m so scared that the rain might dump on us tomorrow… I was on my way to pick up the clay in the morning and then the rain was monstrous… especially for June! It really better not be like this tomorrow. I hope the weather will be nice to us and at least wait until we’re done before it comes down!

Throughout the week, I’ve been trying to get in contact with a bunch of several studios to see who would offer any reclaim clay, but the ones that offered for free needed a lot of labour to revive the clay, and I don’t have the facilities to do so! A studio closer to home offered pugged reclaim, so that’s great! It wasn’t free, but it was still “dirt” cheap (get it? Because clay is fancy dirt?! Hahahaha…). I took it home and prepared it for the workshop. I divided the 22 pounds of clay into 1 pound chunks and wedged them, cubed them, and wrapped them back up. They’re ready to roll tomorrow – I can’t wait to see what everyone will create with the material.

Over the week, we’ve had really productive meetings as larger and individual groups. Today seemed to have tied up all the loose ends and all we need now is for tomorrow to come. Working on this workshop together was really fun because as someone who’s all about interdisciplinary and collaborative learning/teaching, it gave me a good sense of what it’ll be like. We were all pulling ideas and concepts from our own teachables and it was really insightful. One of my biggest goals as an art educator is to find a way and collaborate with every subject including science, math, physical education, foods, music, tech education, socials, English, and all of the others. In art education, there’s a really big emphasis on accessing prior knowledge and understanding how the world works around us to create something that’s meaningful. Establishing these connections and actually working with other classes can open the minds of so many because art is often isolated and labelled as the class that’s “easy” and the only goal is to make things look pretty… I could go on about this forever, but art is far from easy; for example, like English or social studies, it’s layered and complex with intentions, choices, and meanings. Art requires a lot of critical and creative problem solving, and is made attractive through knowing how to use and manipulate materials, techniques, and theories. Learning through play is a key aspect of art education and it’s not only us that gets to experience this, but a lot of other subjects as well. For example, over the last few weeks, us lucky few at the Orchard have learned so much through play. But what I’m trying to say is: especially in a student’s mind, interdisciplinary learning is usually overlooked because they are focusing on one subject at a time, all the time. But what if we are able to help them realize that yes, the main focus is in math, or biology, or music, but we can use other knowledge learned from other classes to help us learn. How can we help students to realize that all knowledge is connected to one another somehow, and is able to help make learning more meaningful and essentially easier in the long run? Learning through connections, experiences, and relations has so much potential and power. Over my time at the CFE and especially when organizing this workshop, it’s helped to make my understanding of that clearer.

See you tomorrow at our workshop!

Cats and dogs over my head on my way to pick up the clay!

🌧️🐱🐶

Dividing up the clay at home.

Greg

What a fantastic workshop we had in the UBC orchard garden to cap off a wonderful CFE experience! The day started with some delicious bread provided by A Bread Affair, cheese and tea in the garden. We chatted and then began our activities for the workshop.

Our theme of the day was Garden Guardians, and Chris, started off by introducing the fascinating shared etymology between the two words. We split off into two groups and began our artistic adventures. Team nettle was running a visual arts education activity. Using clay, we all created a small figurine that represented a guardian of a garden. People chose bees, birds, mushrooms, ferries, and of course Mr. Potato Head. We had so much fun getting our hands dirty and experiencing an art form that for many of us we hadn't since we were in grade school.

The second group, group dandelion, set off to create individual poems of a garden guardian they had chosen. They were given time to do word associations and then create beautiful poems and also share their insights in their groups.

Lunch was a fantastic success with delicious contributions by every single participant. We had tzatziki, chickpea salad wraps, fresh bread, fruits and some herb infused spring water. It was also a great chance to socialize and get to know our guests even better.

Overall, we had a splendid time and everyone who came really gave 100% to make sure it was a smooth and enjoyable experience for all.
A big thank you to all of our guests who participated with vigour and enthusiasm. We couldn't have done it without you!

Garden Guardians: Workshop!

Jessie

As a brief explanation of our clay portion of the workshop, we decided to create the garden guardians out of clay because of its natural properties. It's harvested from the ground, it's all natural with components from the earth, and decomposes back into the soil once it's dried and watered down. The clay is nutritious for the soil as it decomposes oxides and nutrients back as food. Then in return, the freshly fed soil will feed the roots and plants can get a share of it as well! I really wanted to explore with the notion of borrowing and returning as well as it fits the concept of guardians.