Emerging Artist In Residence

I joined DSFC as an Emerging Artist in Residence. This position gave me a range of roles, opportunities and responsibilities. I started by getting involved in class workshops, this was mainly ceramic based as I could offer help and support to both students and members of staff, who were unsure or struggling with the medium. I then took the opportunity to observe how a local artist taught an after school club and community class. This was very helpful as I could witness first hand on how to talk to different age categories as well as seeing different teaching techniques. After, I went on to help out with more workshops but I started to give artist talks, which involved me explaining my practice and showing my work to classes full of students, as well as giving pottery wheel demonstrations to a group of around 10 students that were interested in what I do.

One of my biggest achievement during my residency was getting the glass kiln at Sixth Form working once again as glass fusing had not been taught for around 10 years. This allowed me to teach both staff and students how to use the kiln and create fused glass pieces. I provided a range of help sheets and tutorials to try and get as many people involved as possible. Following this, I started to mentor Foundation Year students which allowed me to teach them everything I knew about glass and ceramics. My responsibilities were to plan and provide workshops which were safe in a school environment. My responsibilities also included having one to one tutorials so the pieces the students were working on were relevant to their projects. These tutorials also allowed the students to ask me any questions they had and I could also ask them about what techniques they wanted to learn so I could then plan more workshops. 

As my confidence grew talking to students, I was provided the opportunity to help students prepare for interviews with universities. This role involved mock interviews, where I listened to students explain the course they were applying for and then talking through a portfolio which I had to provide feedback on and how they could improve when they presented their work to the university. 

Whilst I was doing my residency at Durham Sixth Form, there were also two other artists in residence. We often had discussions about each other's practice and what we could possibly do for creating outcomes. We also discussed collaborating and helping each other to produce outcomes as well as what kind of classes and opportunities we could provide for the students. The artists were also helpful as they provided how I could progress on a professional level when the residency ended.