Mapping the Creative Process – Year 3

Working alongside two artists with very different styles and techniques, Hackney Community College students working on the Mapping the Creative Process project explored the notion of mapping and cross-pollination of creative ideas and methodologies. It acknowledged how the students can inspire and influence each other, creating an exploratory creative thread from their memories, senses and working with objects around them or from the limited vocabulary of pictograms and colours.

The students worked to develop two specific outcomes with artists Gayle Chong Kwan and Agnes Poitevin-Navarre. They developed their ideas over a week-long period, each day contrasting and building upon each other.

Agnes focused on visual and graphic strategies of mapping creative processes as well as articulating how we can gain and share inspirations with one another, under the premise of  ‘Circles of Friends & Circle of Influence’. The students also codified the creative thread from the first germination of an idea until the final artwork, building on an analogy of a physical journey with ‘All the Roads Lead to HCC’.

Gayle developed activities with the students, which acted as a counter-balance to more narrative strategies explore at the start of the week. Through a series of sensory activities, students were encouraged to explore non-visual creative and collaborative processes, from which the students developed installations, objects and performances which either they or the viewer were able to experience or participate in.