Are you a senior secondary or tertiary art and design educator? Are you looking for arts industry education and/or professional development opportunities to complement your teaching? tbC’s Arts Industry Education and Development Program might be just what you are looking for.
tbC has been operating for thirteen years. It is a youth-led, adult and peer mentored artist-run initiative that supports young artists in building artistic practices and careers via an accessible and ongoing studio space that generates creative opportunities and recognition.
tbC’s Arts Industry Education and Development Program engages creative learners in workshops, site tours, folio support, exam preparation and creative practices that supplement secondary and tertiary art and design curricula. tbC enlists the help of its young members in delivering this program, making it accessible and relevant. Artists share their experiences of co-founding an artist-run space and the building of artistic practices and careers. Key areas of knowledge transfer include collaborative practice, mentoring, studio-based learning, creative production, exhibition development and artist-run governance.
Earlier programs have been very successful, with many schools participating from inner and outer Melbourne. The current program (a re-boot after Covid) is available in a virtual, incursion and/or site-specific format. The sessions are 2-3 hours long, for which tbC charges a small fee. The virtual sessions are intimate, interactive and creative - making the program accessible nationally and internationally.
Should you be interested in discussing how tbC can build a session that suits your students’ learning needs, please contact Tiffaney Bishop on 0414 620637 or via email at tiffaneybishop@gmail.com.
I just wanted to say a huge thank you for having us yesterday. Our visit was fantastic. I love what you are doing and was so encouraged by your passion for art and artists – especially young artists. Sometimes in school, it’s hard to get across to students that what they are doing is more than just a subject with criteria to fulfil. The girls were inspired by what they saw and heard and now have some great information for themselves and their November exam. We wish you all the best in whatever direction tbC takes and look forward to hearing more great things.
University of Melbourne - Master of Education (Identity, Culture & the Arts)
“Should a child-centred art curriculum that emphasises personalised learning of students by actively engaging their environment and community exclude lessons on graffiti?”
Kan, K. H. (2001)
STUDIO PRACTICE SESSION
A tag is the most basic writing of an artist's name and the most common form of graffiti. Tagging is the act of drawing, painting, sticking or scratching a personal tag on a public surface, usually in one (or limited) colour. A graffiti writer's tag is a personalised signature. While a tag is usually rendered quickly, taggers often put a lot of time and thought into the lettering, styling and meaning behind their tag. Tagging is a controversial social, cultural, political and community practice, mainly characterised as vandalism. Despite this, there is significant social, cultural and political communication and community participation behind the design and practice of tagging.
Collaboration is a key component of social, cultural and community engagement, hence the group approach to this task. Pretend you are part of a graffiti crew and create a group tag. You will need paper and pens (a range of different nibs to experiment with is good, but not essential). Collaboratively design a tag that socially, culturally, political and aesthetically sums up a real or hypothetical community collective identity. The goal is to express a group identity in the tag. Or design a tag that challenges social and cultural norms within your (youth) community.
Notice:
The thin and thick pen strokes, the blending of symbols, shapes and letters and accentuated punctuation.
Also, notice the way a tagger often makes marks 'with a flourish'.
blar blar blar is a tagger from the Belgrave area. Tags are generally not as readable as this one. Taggers go to great lengths to make a tag that represents a coded signature, one that preserves their anonymity or requires deciphering. It is not known whether blar has unintentionally misspelt 'blah' or chosen to. Nonetheless, It is quite witty.
The triangle with legs is technically a tag. It still qualifies as a tag because it uses limited colours and is quick and easy to do. This particular tag pops up all over Belgrave and surrounds. While other taggers know who the artist is, the tagger is anonymous to the general community – and police!
Some taggers use big, round, fat letters, with or without outline and/or fill.
Taggers generally don't tag a well-regarded graffiti or street artist's work (e.g. 'Stampz' Kissing Snow White and Cinderella).
Disclaimer:
tbC supports and engages members (and young people in general) in legal graffiti practices. Today’s group learning activity is not glorifying or validating tagging. It is aimed at a higher education learning environment and will not necessarily fit within school classrooms. However, given appropriate context, it could be an interesting educational and engagement activity for grade 6 or secondary classes!
Yarra Water commissioned tbC to devise a drain art project to support the local Save The Platypus campaign. tbC artists painted ten drain lids in the township of Belgrave to remind local community members about the environmental effects storm water rubbish has on the dwindling local platypus population. The Save the Platypus Club often brings school groups to Belgrave for educational tours of the drain art project. tbC artists host these tours.
tbC is working with young artists in Laverton, southwest of Melbourne. Studio Time at Woods Street Arts Space sees young artists devising and directing their own collaborative arts practice.
University of Melbourne - Master of Teaching Capstone (Primary & Secondary)
STUDIO PRACTICE SESSION
Make a SMALL artwork - one that promotes a range of BIG ideas.
This creative activity was inspired by Damien McIntyre, a co-founding tbC member. For tbC, this creative activity led to the making of a substantial body of artwork – artwork that includes dialogical, digital, sound and public art outcomes.
You will need:
A Dice (you can download a digital dice from the App store if you want)
A piece of A5 or A4 paper
6 coloured pencils/pens
A Ruler
The idea is to roll the dice and let the numbers rolled direct the colour and length of each line drawn.
For Damien, the colour of each line and its length is as follows
#1 is Black and represents a 1cm line
#2 is Yellow and represents a 2cm line
#3 is Green and represents a 3cm line
#4 is Blue and represents a 4cm line
#5 is Purple and represents a 5cm line
#6 is Red and represents a 6cm line
You are not required to strictly follow Damien’s parameters; they are a guide only. You could use different colours or types of pens/pencils etc. You don’t even need to stick to drawing straight lines. That’s all we’ll say for now, as this is meant to be an unstructured creative activity. You have half an hour to produce a small drawing.
After you have completed this task, click here to find out more about how this artistic activity developed in the tbC studio.
