Workshops, Lesson Plans and Handouts

"Art therapy can help people express themselves more freely, improve their mental health, and improve interpersonal relationships. The basis of art therapy is established on the idea that people can recover and feel better via artistic expression. " (National Library of Medicine, 2022)

As part of our mission is to get the public involved in art to help combat well-being issues like isolation and loneliness, and we want to help create more opportunities for graduates, we decided that there would be space in our exhibition and headquarters for workshops. The workshops that are to be held would be a range of different art formats and would cover content of varying degrees of difficulty so that there is something for everyone, whether you're a beginner or a professional.

As a photographer by practice, my job was to look at photography workshops. After attending a session run by the enterprise team and photographer, Chris Chinnock (you can find his website here), I had a much better understanding of how he runs his workshops, using Instagram as a tool to solely sell more of them, rather than to create an online following. Chris runs three workshops that specialise in film photography. The prices of these run somewhere between £75-£100. This theoretically makes Chris a potential competitor. I wanted to try and eliminate as many competitors like this as possible but in a way that would still benefit the artists involved. Some of these workshops can range all the way up to £700+ which if we're trying to get people more involved in art and in touch with their creative sides, seems an unreasonable price, especially if those putting on the workshops are still students or have limited experience with photography. The way around this would be to have a donation-based system for the workshops with a set minimum price. For example, you would set the workshops at a price of £10 per person as a minimum donation, but then if people felt driven to donate more then they would be able to. This has multiple benefits for the artists involved. It allows those putting on the exhibition to feel like what they're giving back to the community is valuable, since we live in a capitalist society, we're essentially programmed to believe things only have value if they're financially viable, therefore the artist giving the workshop would feel like they're adding value to people's lives. It would also help the exhibition and Unboxt, as the donations would go into funding these things. You could also allow somewhere for people to donate after the workshop if they feel like giving more based on the experience they had.

I started by sitting down and deciding what sort of things I wish I knew when I first started out with photography. Way back when I was taking the subject for my A-Levels. My A-Level course was pretty much just how to basic edit in Photoshop, we didn't learn a single thing about how to use a camera correctly. It wasn't until I joined my degree course at Huddersfield University, that I was taught how to use a camera including basics like aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. This was where I got the idea for the first workshop from. I created a small lesson plan and then a handout that the attendees would receive, these are both below. As you'll see from the lesson plan, this is one of the longer workshops, including a walk around the town or city where the exhibition would be held. This fits with the idea of the time capsule within the exhibition space, giving the attendees a chance to capture part of their community and leave it in a safe space for future generations to look back on. This is another way to really reach out and make a connection with the surrounding community, making people a part of something bigger.

Here is the handout, click the button to download.

From the basics workshop, I decided that basics in a photography studio might be something people would be interested in. This would give beginners an insight into how studio spaces work. Not everyone who uses professional studio spaces are big named fashion brands. The idea of this workshop was to show how simple It can be once you know what you're doing, I also made two lesson plans for this (below). I decided that this could be split into two workshops, one that showed how a studio would work with a model for things like fashion or beauty. I also thought the second studio workshop would be more focused on product photography with objects. Product photography can be mixed with portraiture, but these workshops were aimed at beginners so by separating them, would be more simple and easier to grasp as a first-time photographer. But this may not be feasible in the exhibition spaces. You would need a back wall- which would be simple enough, but then you would need lighting equipment, and a computer to tether to along with normal equipment and so this would be harder to do in the space available. However, it could be possible if the exhibition was held in a town where a studio space was, there could be an opportunity for Unboxt to partner with one to hold the workshop.

I also came up with a plan for a workshop on editing techniques in Photoshop. This would be a session that would start with beginner techniques such as dodge and burn, cropping, and white balancing. Then it would slowly make its way up to harder techniques such as airbrushing, content-aware fill, and techniques that professionals in the beauty industry use.

This also may be harder to put on depending on the area but potentially Unboxt could partner with local schools and universities to achieve these sorts of workshops. An editing course would ideally need to have a minimum of a computer for each participant, with Adobe loaded on. You could advertise this specifically to creatives that already have the software loaded onto laptops, but some people may want to find out if Photoshop is worth having before investing such a large sum in the editing software. The other option would be to run this workshop more as a lecture style; however, I feel people would struggle more to engage with the lectures. Also, people have different learning styles and so someone may find the workshop more beneficial if they were able to complete tasks or attempt the techniques as the workshop progressed. You can see the lesson plan for this workshop below.

Finally, when looking at workshops, I really wanted them to be fun-filled with engaging activities. I contemplated doing research and for the most part, the only workshops I found were of a more serious nature. And so, I reflected once more on my degree, and which projects I enjoyed most. During my first year of university, we were exploring image appropriation through the form of collages. Taking images that already existed in the world and creating new meaning out of them, through a number of different techniques. This eventually evolved into me utilising the techniques with my own work and this was the idea I wanted to do for the workshop. I even emailed two of my past tutors to try and get hold of the brief for when I did that module back in 2020, I could not find the brief anywhere. Nevertheless, I wrote my own lesson plan based very roughly on the inspiration, which you will find below. During my search, I also found a website that offered a similar project, and this offered a little help for me to write the plans. I think this workshop would be engaging for all including children as it's an opportunity to get a little messy and have some fun while learning. I anticipate that this would likely be the most popular workshop, especially for families within the community and so would recommend that this would be run on more than one occasion. To me it seems like an excellent way to get the community involved, giving them the chance to use just their own images, or ones from magazines, newspapers etc, and a bit of glue. You could even theme these workshops given the time of year e.g summer, Valentine's, Easter, and Christmas. Due to this being a workshop that would be more accessible to families, I would also recommend this workshop being at a reduced fee of £5 per person, just because families on a budget may struggle to pay a larger fee.

After a conversation with a friend who had saved everything over the course of the degree, I managed to get the original brief. While I had already written my lesson plan and the handout for the workshop, it was interesting to get back to the original inspiration.

Conclusion

While we would be limited to resources for some of the lessons, which would be something I would eventually like to tackle, I think I have managed to create workshops that would engage both the public and professionals through creativity-based sessions. Some of them, like the photography basics workshop, not only inform amateur photographers how to use some of the core skills of photography but then encourage them to get out and explore their own community in order to capture something that is often missed. These photos can then be added to the time-capsule part of the exhibition and leave a wholesome mark on the community.

References:

• Chis Chinnock Photography. (2022). Start your Adventure on Film!. chris chinnock photography. https://www.chrischinnockphotography.com

• National Library of Medicine. (2022). Role of Art Therapy in the Promotion of Mental Health: A Critical Review. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9472646

• Yang, R. (2018). A Project to Help Teach Your Students About Appropriation. The Art of Education University. https://theartofeducation.edu/2018/04/a-project-to-help-teach-your-students-about-appropriation

Illustrations

• Fig. 1 Higbottom, R. (2018,09,24). TFD1304 Module Briefing [pdf]. Art, Design and Architecture. https://brightspace.hud.ac.uk/d2l/le/content/11418/viewContent/133813/View