BLACKBOARDS THROUGH THE DECADES

 

We discussed ways in which we could represent the heritage of school and education symbolically, and decided the blackboard is a widely recognised object from most people’s school lives. 

 

We created 8 easels with blackboards on to represent schooldays of the decades from the 50’s onwards.  We wanted to collect as much information on past school days from the surrounding area of St Teilo’s school, so we used these in our exhibition in Cardiff Story Museum in March 2015 to collect further information from the public about their school experience relating to which ever decade they were brought up in.

 

Using carpentry skills learnt in the previous part of the project, the students were able to cut out wood for the easels and learnt how to attach these together.  Other students painted the boards and stencilled on letters to show which boards represented which decade.  As students were completing their Bronze Art awards these processes were also important in order to achieve these as an extra part of the project.

 

By this time we had a strong team of students from St Teilo’s school, working to their strengths creatively or on the research team.  The heritage of our schools was being researched throughout each stage so when it came to doing the final piece we had plenty of information.

 

Students continued to learn about the history of education, by looking up key dates in history to make a timeline on the easels of when things may have changed dramatically or new systems were introduced.  They then stencilled these facts on the appropriate boards. 

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