On Monday 3rd of June, a group of year 10 students from Thornhill Academy attended the Express yourself Masterclass at The Northern School of Art in Hartlepool as a part of Future Me’s suite of regional masterclasses. Students were able to utilise some of the arts and textiles equipment as well as touring the extremely impressive graduate summer show, which proved a hit with students!
To start the day students were taken to one of the many studios at Northern School of Art, where they were briefed on the day and were told they would be focusing on print making. The students would be practicing their print work skills by making their own personalised tote bags.
Before students could get started on the print making workshop, staff ensured everyone was equipped with aprons and gloves as the students would be utilising ink mark making, which can get messy! Once everyone was equipped staff and student volunteers demonstrated how to best mark with ink and advised students on what shapes, colours and size marks would transfer best onto the tote bags. All of the students had a go at mark making and there were some creative pieces.
Whilst the mark making pieces were drying students helped to clean down the textiles studio and started to collect a range of different printed images that they would also use as part of their tote bag designs. During the workshop students were able to ask lots of questions, which allowed them to picture what it would be like if they chose to attend higher education to study textiles or art.
Once students had positioned all of the printed images and mark making pieces onto their totes, they would then be placed into the heated print press machine, this piece of equipment was something that students had not seen or had chance to use at school, so it was an interesting experience which resulted in lots of amazing tote bags!
After a quick break in the café and lots of showing off their new tote bag creations students were ready to tour the graduate summer show. Students were shown round a range of different departments to see what some of the final year students had created, some of the favourite areas to explore where textiles, film sets and costume design.
Overall students said they had a great time at the Masterclass, as they enjoyed making their tote bags and they loved how the staff taught the workshop allowing them to be both creative and hands on! It was great to see local students exploring a local institution that has so much to offer. There are lots of options to study the arts in the Northeast, look through the university and college websites here
This event was part of a suite of regional masterclasses delivered by FutureMe.
