PUPIL REFERRAL UNIT -  SONG/ART

In order to include as many variants of students as possible, we worked with a group of  students from Gabalfa Education Centre for a few weeks.  We repeated the activity with the Jenga blocks to reflect their priorities in education.  We conducted discussions about education past and present with the group and pooled ideas on large rolls of paper with marker pens.  We also showed them the ‘Brick in the Wall’ Pink Floyd video to prompt thoughts and ideas about why historically we have needed education, and ways we could change or improve it. 

We felt this was the most appropriate way to approach the project for this particular group of students, in order to help support their future plans for education and perhaps give them a more positive outlook.  We talked about the heritage of education, how the past differs from the present.  To give the students some food for thought, we shared ideas on how we would rebuild the country after imagining a fictional idea of an educational apocalypse several years earlier and then went on to collect ideas on what their school/college utopia would be. 

As a creative response to this, some students chose to make canvas art, selecting a phrase or word about education.   Two students with a passion for spoken word/rap music, wrote some responses to what we had discussed, speaking mainly about their experience of education.  This provided some very interesting social commentary as a contrast to the interviews conducted previously with the older generation, who also had a varied mix of positive and negative experiences surrounding their school days. 

The students started to think about the history of education and were able to make some sensible comparisons surrounding the topic.

As these were students with special circumstances, often from difficult backgrounds, we felt the work they created showed very positive progress.

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