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AYO Autumn Term - Edition 1 - 2020

Welcome to AYO, Langley Park Girls School, Artists Youth Organisation. Our mission is to report to you all the amazing creative Arts projects that have been happening both in our school and in the wider community.

Hello from our developing TEAM at AYO!

Zara T - Francesca D - Sienna L - Nina D - Maryam E - Emily S - Emma W - Lucy H

We have all been really busy this term in documenting all the wonderful creative events that have been going on at LPGS and in the wider community. In this first edition of AYO we bring to you articles of creative interest and intrigue that just go to show the resilience and determination that is an innate human quality to keep being creative and express ourselves even in the face of extremely difficult and unsettling times and tell our stories and share with our fellow people!

There is so much to shout about this term, so please enjoy this first edition of AYO!

September 2020 saw the start of a very surreal and different academic year... Covid-19 has certainly left its mark but it has not prevented creative expression from growing and developing. The start of the term got off to a flying start with Adobe and Sky TV coming into LPGS to work with some Y8 students on a creative digital media project.

Angellica Bell working with our year 8 students.

Working with television present Angellica Bell and members of Adobe and Sky TV the students set about making a promotional video for a new challenge competition called The Edit.

The Edit challenges students at key stages 3 to 5 to create a 90-second video news report raising awareness of climate change issues in their local community. With free access to exclusive Sky professional footage and Adobe’s video editing tools, students will have everything they need to be the change and make The Edit.

The Edit is now being run at LPGS as a school wide challenge and students across all year groups from key stage 3 right up to key stage 5 have been invited to take up the challenge, form their own collaborative media teams and make a creative and engaging awareness video about climate change and the impact on the local environment. The deadline for entries is April 2021 when we hope to share our students' outcomes.

Further to this it is important to share that the Visual Arts Department has been working with Adobe on aspects of The Edit challenge and we have embedded key parts of the project into our new scheme of work which we are currently running with all year 8 students in their Creative Digital Media project in the Visual Arts. We have done this as part of our focus on raising digital literacy skills. In the Visual Arts we are passionate about traditional creative approaches to make artwork, however, we are all only too aware of how important it is for all our students to develop their creative digital literacy skills in order to be more confident and fluent in using software and hardware and in preparation for future careers in an ever changing digital market. In this project our students learn how to work in small collaborative groups, share and develop ideas, and learn creative skills in how to digitally document research and progress via Adobe Spark Page but also how to produce and edit digital film via Adobe Rush.

In the Visual Arts Department we are really excited at the prospects available to all our students through the use of industry standard software. These are changing and challenging times indeed but we have taken the leap!!

For more details on THE EDIT and if you want to join up contact Mr Fox Joyce (Head of Visual Arts) - ef@lpgs.bromley.sch.uk

The Playlist - by Lucy. H

Playlist:

we fell in love in october- girl in red

Arms Tonite - Mother Mother

Born This Way- Lady Gaga

Burn- Hamilton

Star Shopping- Lil Peep

Blood//water-

Bang- AJR

Wonder- Shawn Mendes

Hokus Pokus- Insane Clown Posse

Cold cold cold- Cage The Elephant

Team- Lorde

Live Forever- Oasis

Sweet Child O’ mine- Guns n’ Roses

Livin On A Prayer- Bon Jovi

Lemonade- Internet Money

Lovely- Billie Eilish

Paparazzi- Lady Gaga

Somebody I Used To Know- Gotye

Jump- Van Halen

Another Star- Stevie Wonder

Leave A Light On- Tom Walker

To Be Human- SIA

Don’t Let Me Down- Chainsmokers

Dynasty- MIIA

Birds Set Free- SIA

Animation Corner by Emma. W

!!MILD FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING!!

Hi! I’m Emma W, and I made this animation! This part of AYO will be all about digital art and animation, where I give tips and tricks and share what I’ve learnt so far. My email is A10771@lpgs.bromley.sch.uk if anybody wants to request what I go over. For now, I’m going to walk through what I did to make this.

I’ll go into how I made the frames for now.

Making the frames: What I did, was open my art program and select the animation assist or window (this gives you the ability to make frames easily and lets you see what was on the last frame but on a lower opacity [more transparent]). For this I used Krita (a free drawing app on PC), but it honestly doesn’t matter, as long as you can animate how you want to. I made an animatic (where you sketch each frame, the pictures in an animation, in time to the music), then did the lineart, the lines over a sketch, on a separate layer (the layers in an artwork, so you can control what’s on top of another), making it look smoother and coloured it in. I continued with this for each part I had thought out. When I finished, I saved the frames into a separate folder on my computer and they were ready for putting into an editing program.

Art in the Spotlight

Guernica - Pablo Picasso - 1937

Francesca D. met up with Mr Green from the English department to discuss a piece of Art of great historical, political and social narrative; one that warns us of the dangers of power and greed through the tyranny of dictatorship.

Book Review

By Francesca D.

A great read for anyone this Christmas is the book, “Northern Lights”, by Phillip Pullman. This acclaimed pentalogy follows the story of Lyra Belaqua - a young girl who grows up in a fantastical world where witches, angels, great bear kings, evil forces and the church influence everything around her. Lyra is special though – from birth she is connected to a prophecy that predicts she will endeavour on a journey - one which she must be ignorant to do so. Others know of the danger she will face, for example her Oxford tutor, but are helpless in assisting her with knowledge of her quest.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book as it took me away into so many different worlds in vivid imagery and adventure. My favourite part of the novel was when Lyra first met Mrs. Coulter, as the relationship between the two is extremely delicate and interesting to see developing throughout the novel.

And of course, if you’re already a fan of this book, why not check out the following books in the series: The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass, The Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth. BBC One is additionally streaming a televised show of the series, if you’re interested in watching it.

Either way, this novel by Phillip Pullman is a great read and will certainly have you hooked over the Christmas holidays!!

ZANELE MUHOLI

A Visual Activist

Here we celebrate the work of Zanele Muholi; a visual activist whose work deals with notions of identity and marginalisation.

Zanele Muholi, born in 1972 in Umlazi (Durban), lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. Muholi is a South African visual activist and photographer. For over a decade she has documented black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people’s lives in various townships in South Africa.

Tate Modern had planned a retrospective of Zanele Muholi's work back in March 2020 but due to Covid-19 and lock down the gallery was forced to shut its doors to the public; another tragic outcome of this unsettle period in our time. However, Tate have recently announced that the 'show will go on' and you can now see Zanele Muholi's work at Tate Modern between 5th November 2020 and 7th March 2021. This is a must see show for all, a chance to open your minds, explore the self and ask questions of our and others identity in these times of change and states of flux.

Y11 Origami head wear

Y11 Textiles students have been exploring how to create headwear pieces using origami folding techniques. Inspired by the theme of fragments, students used techniques such as V pleats, spans and parabolas, one crease – no crease to create a wide range of origami samples which were then composed into sculptural headwear pieces. The outcomes are stunning, and I look forward to viewing how the students incorporate their new found origami skills into their final outcome.

Allan Grey’s Love Letter to Blanche

Beloved, you told me you were empty, though it is far from what I saw. You were more than just the daughter of a broken man to me, and I wanted more than anything to be more than just an escape for you. I reminisce as I write to you, beloved, hoping that you too remember the bittersweet memories and the time we shared together. You stayed in my room thinking about your Mississippi time and your Mississippi life, speaking to me real softly in the dark, unafraid to reveal your pain, your shadow. Defiant. Uncompromising. I adored you. The nights were gorgeous shades of black tranquillity. We were married to the poetry of the stars, holding the beauty infinitely. We talked long into the night, and I became engulfed by your words and your stories. Every evening was a blissful permanent state of reverie. And for a year it stayed like that.

Blanche, your angel eyes saw the goodness in my many sins, sins that became more and more visible as time continued. As the sun went to sleep, we came to life, so I’d bury my head deep into your shoulder and weep like a child, negating the cold truths, anything to evade the truth that lurked in the light. Our love was like sleep to the freezing.

The morning still came beloved. Sunlight crept in through the blinds as I fell in and out of consciousness, comfortable on your silk pillows, comfortable in our dreams, We bathed together, washing off the pain we felt, the sins that we were both trying so desperately to hide. Most days were like this, pain that came and went in an arduous cycle. You wished to find truth at the bottom of a bottle, and I wished to find home in another stranger’s bed. I still hope that I was not just an escape for you Blanche.

After a while, you broke the intimacy. Declaring ruthlessly that I was too gentle, too giving, too monotonous. Enraged that I could not live up to my role. Enraged that I was just a boy who made you feel as though you couldn’t switch me, fix me, that I had failed you. Blanche, you were terrified to be the consolation prize, terrified that I’d go running, fulfilling the role fellas usually played in your life, bringing up your buried trauma to the surface. But fear cannot coexist with love, beloved. You have to come back to the real world.

As I sit here writing to you, I realize that I still hide you in my poetry and keep your heart-warming laugh at the back of my mind, your words deep in my soul, in another chapter of my story. You told me you were confiding in the moon to stay afloat, in this sea of uncertainty during our time together. People come and go beloved, that is a life lesson that needs to be learnt. And I know someday, when we think back to our time together, the hurt, the burning anger, and the grief will subside, and all we will be left with is love. The past has to stay in the past. It is true that we are reminded of how beautiful endings are every day when the sun sets, and the moon rises. We found truth in each other, but we call our love a beautiful dream because one had to be asleep to believe in it.

Your dream, Allan.

Jemila - A Love Letter

Y11 Textiles 3D Shibori samples

Y11 Textiles students are currently working on a coursework project entitled ‘Fragments'. Students began their 3D shibori responses by producing observational drawings of the inside of a pomegranate fruit. Students then used their drawings as a source of inspiration in creating 3D shibori samples. The first stage involved wrapping buttons and beads in a piece of polyester fabric using cotton to hold the buttons and beads in place. The fabric was then boiled in a purple dye for 30 minutes. When the fabric is dry, the threads are removed and due to the high temperature whilst boiling, the fabric holds the wonderful circular shapes and 3D form, after the buttons and beads have been removed. These samples have been scanned, and through the use of sublimation printing, an image of these beautiful samples has been printed onto fabric. Students will develop these outcomes even further by applying a mixture of hand embroidery and free motion embroidery on the sewing machine to add detail, directly from the observational drawings that began the 3D shibori samples.

Supernova

Mummy said I would be a star.

Now that my lips have been touched and my hips seem to bust,

those fantasies of being a star are no longer what I aim for.

Because I came across a supernova- the dictionary definition being that a supernova is an event that occurs upon the death of certain types of stars.

Do you know how many people wish to witness this demonic beauty, when the actuality is that stars are dying for the satisfaction of pleasuring our visions.

My talent will not be replaced with a shine, so that when I die you can add my name to the walk of fame and find that my existence will be limited to the mere area of a marble star. No.

I will not wish to exist to embody a supernova,

because yes beauty is a trait all young girls hope they have.

But the day I struggled to pull a dress past my thighs,

the main trait I searched for in myself was inspiration.

Growing up in a society full of girls who wish to shine,

I have changed my mentality in so many ways.

Understanding that my death will be memorable not because it filled the sky with a sight of pure elegance, but because every single word I had ever spoken will rise from the cemeteries I created inside the people I have inspired.

Those lines people clicked after will grow legs and walk from my ashes. My death will be more than what we call a supernova.

My death will be a galaxy of all the poems I have ever written,

all the poems I have ever spoken, even all the poems I threw away.

I am not a supernova.

Mummy I will not be a star.

I have already began my mission to leave this world

as an entire universe.

By Zhanai W

Credits:

Created with images by Pexels - "music cassette tape cassette" • emarodeejay - "pioneer dj sr2" • spirit111 - "cassiopeia supernova cassiopeia spiral"