STAR-Post Art 2021 Issue 1

Foreword

Ang Hwee Loo Deputy Director (Art) STAR

In 2020, COVID-19 changed our lives completely—new technologies and digital literacies emerged overnight which challenged us to re-think of alternatives in schools and in teacher professional development. The success of the 2020 Arts Education Conference (AEC) demonstrates the agility and adaptability of the AEC organising committee and the arts fraternity at large, being nimble by pioneering STAR’s inaugural virtual conference (e-AEC). In this STAR-Post, we consolidated the rich learning from our conference speakers, including how educators found great teaching moments for art lessons in schools during the pandemic. These constituted valuable learning experiences which helped students see the relevance of art making while developing their ability to thrive in different contexts. Several presentations shed light on leveraging the arts as powerful and safe spaces to communicate personal stories and how the arts can help connect experiences in ways that language cannot. Educators took pride in being a part of learning communities that shared resources, which proved to be crucial for the augmentation of Home-Based Learning (HBL) and Blended Learning (BL) in schools.

It is my hope that by revisiting these wonderful sharings, we may relive the exciting transitions and transformations that have taken shape in the course of arts education through 2020. In 2021, let us harness new technologies and literacies to refresh existing pedagogies and blaze new paths forward. I am confident that the fraternity will continue to learn and inspire one another in this age of disruptive innovation.

We wish all a happy and enriching 2021.

Highlights from the Opening Address

Mr Lawrence Wong Minister for Education

In his joint opening address for e-AEC and the Physical & Sports Education Virtual Conference 2020, Minister for Education, Mr Lawrence Wong, emphasised that education is not just about “filling a pail”, or solely about cognitive learning. It is also about igniting in our students the joy of learning and developing in them 21st century competencies—important life skills, social, and emotional competencies that will help them to address current challenges and navigate future uncertainties with resilience and hope. He shared how the arts provide platforms for students to pursue their passion and showcase their talents, instil values of discipline and teamwork and forge shared memories with peers from different backgrounds.

↘ Watch it here

Opening Address by Minister for Education, Mr Lawrence Wong

Developing Caring and Resilient Individuals

The arts speak to our intrinsic human need for selfexpression, which can also be harnessed to transform and impact our personal lives and the community. Apart from acquiring the skills and perseverance required to perform various artistic processes, students also learn to adopt multiple perspectives on various social issues, challenge misconceptions and stereotypes, and discover more about the world we live in through arts education.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us turned to the arts for comfort and enjoyment. Several arts teachers also saw a teaching moment in this crisis, and created opportunities for students to express their gratitude for our frontline workers, inspire hope, and spread positivity through various arts activities. For art lessons, students sewed masks and designed poster-cards as part of care packages to convey their appreciation and support for our healthcare workers. Music teachers guided students in composing songs and producing music videos to encourage all frontline workers and to rally Singaporeans in the fight against COVID-19. Such projects have enabled our students to experience and appreciate how the affective power of the arts can uplift spirits and connect people of diverse backgrounds with each other.

Encouraging Interdisciplinary Learning and Authentic Learning Experiences

Just as our world does not exist in clearly defined compartments, teachers should facilitate learning that cuts across multiple disciplines and avoid looking at individual subjects in silos. In schools, there are many opportunities for students to engage in interdisciplinary learning, which connects to the students’ lived experiences. Authentic learning experiences will help students to see the relevance of their learning activities, while developing their ability to adapt and thrive in different contexts.

Nurturing a Spirit of Teacher-led Collaboration

Collaboration is fundamental to augmentation and innovation. During full Home-Based Learning, teachers readily shared their resources and lesson ideas with each other. From initiating the sharing of lesson plans to providing encouragement and feedback, the arts fraternity tapped on online learning communities such as subject-specific Facebook groups to contribute and obtain ideas, to seek feedback and suggestions. For instance, music teachers shared technological platforms and best practices for colleagues to facilitate online music rehearsals and performances more effectively.

Arts educators must continue to develop their professional skills and think of new and innovative ways through which the arts can contribute to the holistic development of our students. To facilitate authentic learning experiences that encourage students to exercise creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, teachers should continuously review existing practices and explore new possibilities. By sharing and exchanging ideas with one another, the fraternity as a whole will learn and be inspired by various best practices to enrich students’ learning.

Highlights from the Welcome Address

Mr

Wong

Siew Hoong Director-General of Education

In his joint welcome address for e-AEC and the Physical & Sports Education Virtual Conference 2020 opening speech, Director-General of Education Mr Wong Siew Hoong spoke about the prime opportunities that arts and physical education classes present in the holistic development of students. These lessons can inculcate 21st century competencies and character traits like determination, tenacity, creativity, and a positive attitude in students.

Welcome Address by Director-General of Education, Mr Wong Siew Hoong

↘ Watch it here

Teamwork and Teachable Moments

Through the mastery of different pedagogies, arts and PE lessons have been especially engaging for students, developing their aerobic and artistic capacities, and promoting deep disciplinary learning. Even as we “reach a high point” in the development of lessons, DGE reminded educators that “teachable moments can be deliberate, can be planned, can be cleverly designed into our lessons”.

Teamwork, for example, can be taught through lessons and CCAs. In team sports, students figure out how to capitalise on each individual’s strengths to perform well as a team. Similarly, in orchestras, everybody must play on the beat, follow the conductor, and harmonise to create beautiful music. Even the visual arts, which is sometimes characterised as a solo effort, presents opportunities for students to learn to collaborate. DGE recalled an art lesson where students each made a house out of clay. After they had a house to call their own, the teacher asked students to come together in groups to build a village, leading to beautiful creations with roads, paths, and greenery and rivers.

These examples demonstrate the opportunities for educators to lend their leadership to the development of arts and physical education through their professional response.

Creativity in a Time of Crisis

Arts and physical education will continue to be important in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world because of the crucial role they play in holistic education and the development of 21st-century competencies.

Many arts and PE teachers demonstrated these skillsets during the circuit breaker, where they exercised professional creativity and found ways for classes and learning to continue despite the disruption in lessons. When school resumed, the fraternity adapted swiftly to the safety management measures and was quickly back in full force. DGE acknowledged and thanked teachers for the innovative solutions, hard work and sound professional conviction exercised during this period while keeping students safe.

Developing and Innovating as a Fraternity

In the post-pandemic world, the fraternity will be moving to blended learning, PDLP and full SBB. These are exciting opportunities for teachers to continue to innovate in the realm of arts and physical education. Besides experimenting with cutting-edge technologies and pedagogies, educators should also think about what arts and physical education can mean in the 21st century. Key to this is considering how they can “bring the students into the future with the kind of confidence and competencies that will enable them to thrive in one of the most challenging worlds that they will inherit.”

To confront the new world, teachers need to bring the joy of learning into their work and continue investing in their professional development. However, they need not do it alone—instead, the fraternity should help each other, teach each other, and grow as a collective.

The Arts, Vulnerability, and Resilience

Ms Yvonne Tham Chief Executive Officer

The Esplanade Company Ltd

Keynote Speaker I at e-AEC 2020

In times of global upheavals, economic uncertainties, or major social movements, what are the changing contexts, implications, and opportunities for the arts in schools? This section revisits the key ideas presented by Keynote Speaker I, Ms Yvonne Tham, for our further contemplation and reflection.

Address I

Executive Officer,

↘ Watch it here

Keynote

by Ms Yvonne Tham, Chief

The Esplanade Company Ltd

Arts and Our Community

Ms Yvonne Tham observed that there has been much discourse about the notion of socially engaged arts in the last ten years. Amidst the widespread adoption of austerity measures around the world, reviews to arts budgets have inevitably led to debates about the relevance and impact of the arts in society. Although we instinctively believe that the arts are essential parts of our existence as human beings, others might struggle to appreciate how the arts relate to people’s personal, civic, and professional lives. Consequently, there is now “a huge desire for artists to reinforce their relationships with the communities and societies in which they lived”. Since the 1980s, our local visual artists and theatre practitioners have been engaging in social issues and practices in their work. Increasingly, more are willing to partner with government and social sector organisations to take their art forms and negotiation of complex societal topics right into the heart of the community.

Overcoming Vulnerabilities

The arts provide powerful and accessible platforms for us to communicate our personal stories and relate to the experiences of others in ways that language may not enable. The ability to look inwards and make connections between our experiences, observations, and somewhat distanced expressions through various art forms allows us to address difficult issues from within a safe space.

Ms Tham shared examples from Music, Drama and Dance: music was used to mentor youths to examine deeply and ultimately overcome their hurts through songwriting and composition. Theatre provided an avenue for youths in crisis to explore their aspirations for the future and build confidence and positive self-image. An intergenerational dance programme allowed youths to be inspired by the resilience of the elderly, and think about how they can overcome their own challenges.

Appreciating Identities and Diversities

Given the cultural vibrance of Asia, to what extent are we embracing and exposing students to the cultural traditions, stories, and arts content from our region in the classroom? Ms Tham suggested that by introducing contemporary stories of Asia to students, educators are in fact helping them to connect with the realities of life in Singapore, considering how cosmopolitan the country is today. Students will also be equipped to develop deeper awareness and relationships with the people that they live and interact with on a daily basis, be it their fellow classmates, teachers, domestic helpers, or workers in the service industry, who could hail from different backgrounds. When we recognise diversity, we are better able to make connections and work towards appreciating both similarities and differences with others.

Embracing Digitalisation

COVID-19 has hastened the elevation of the digital realm to the forefront of daily life. It is critical for teachers to inculcate values such as respect, in tandem with other socio-emotional competencies and artistic skills, to teach students to exercise responsible online behaviour as they navigate digital spaces. While digitalisation continues to redefine teaching, learning, and engagement in arts experiences, we should not fear the unknown and potential drawbacks, but instead encourage each other to explore new practice possibilities.

Meeting Your Students Where They’re At

Reflections on Keynote Address by Ms Yvonne Tham

To me, one of the privileges of being an art teacher was to be the person my art students shared their thoughts with—thoughts they might not have dared or deemed relevant to share with other teachers. I am reminded by Ms Tham’s address that the arts are able to facilitate the exploration of issues that our children and youth hold close to their hearts.

In our art classroom, we often ask students to share their ideas about what they want their artwork to express, and reflect on what they learnt from the process of art making. When we show students that art making can lend itself to meaning making, students are quick to respond to prompts with their unique personal interpretations. If we facilitate the conversation about these interpretations further, we might subsequently uncover issues that they hold dear. These might be addressing social inequalities, personal struggles, or other things that they find inexplicably intriguing.

Instead of using a single right or wrong approach, I believe that we can guide students to use art making as a space to explore different perspectives about their concerns, and make likely and unlikely connections through visual means. As they explore different possibilities of representing their evolving thoughts, students tend to reach the outcome that they can own with the most conviction.

Whilst hosting these conversations, teachers should also be ready to steer the discussions in constructive directions, patiently encouraging students to persevere with their ideas especially when ‘solutions’ are hard to find. Art teachers could also draw from a selection

Ms Lorraine Lee Academy Officer (Art) STAR

of traditional and contemporary artworks that tell stories of how we are living. I have personally witnessed students being moved to tears by the stories in the works of Mona Hatoum, Wang Guangyi and Montien Boonma. Students also shared that reenacting Amanda Heng’s performative pieces during lesson time was their most memorable art experience. Indeed, when we connect our students to a broad spectrum of artworks, we let our students encounter the diversity within the human experience and make sense of their own lived experiences.

Through our efforts to set the tone for responsible conversations and meaningful representations, our art lessons can provide a safe space for students to connect with and express their struggles, fears and aspirations, and lend them the confidence and maturity to face future challenges.

Afterthoughts on Keynote II

Address on Participatory Creativity

Mr Lim Kok Boon

Master Teacher (Art)

STAR

Moderator for Keynote II at e-AEC 2020

Keynote Address II by Mr Edward Clapp, Principal Investigator, Harvard Project Zero

↘ Watch it here

Mr Edward Clapp, Principal Investigator, Harvard Project Zero, Keynote Speaker II at e-AEC 2020

Mr Lim Kok Boon, MTT (Art), STAR

Singapore joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) as a City of Design in 2015. When I think about this, I still feel a sense of ambivalence. I am proud because I have witnessed first-hand the growth of the creative industries in the past two decades; there are now more local designers, architects, artists and filmmakers making their presence felt in Singapore and overseas. I am ashamed because the creative confidence of a people associated with a Creative City— an attitude that we can be creative if we choose to be— has yet to percolate to every corner of our schools.

I had to read Design Singapore Council’s press release for their definition of “creative cities” just to keep my mental assumptions in check. The press release says membership to UCCN is an affirmation of Singapore’s commitment to “uplift the role of culture, creativity and design innovation to develop sustainable cities of the future” (DesignSingapore Council, 2020). Also, Singapore is recognised on the global arena as a city that has “written its own playbook in almost every aspect of governance, be it in housing, education, healthcare, water management and transportation”. As it turns out, we can be a creative nation.

So what might make Singapore a greater Creative City? How can we, as art teachers help our students to reclaim their creative selves because children allegedly lose their creativity as they grow up?

To unravel this puzzle and respond to my questions, allow me to continue the conversation on participatory creativity. I will attempt to outline the main ideas from Keynote Address II by Dr Edward Clapp and share practical ideas I have selected from his book Participatory Creativity (2017) and what I think they mean for the art classroom.

Brief Notes from Keynote

Tracing the historical roots of creativity as an evolving idea, Dr Clapp highlighted that our scholarly understanding of creativity has grown and matured over time. He spoke about three broad narratives:

↘ “He” narrative: a gendered view that only certain men were capable of creative achievements.

↘ “I” narrative: a broader view that anyone could be creative in their own unique and special way.

↘ “We” narrative: groups of individuals collectively generate a shared creative product.

Dr Clapp elaborated on the importance of a “We” narrative of creativity. He cited supporting theories, arguing that any act of creativity is both socially and culturally distributed. He mentioned:

↘ Lev Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory where social factors contribute to learning; therefore, social factors might well contribute to acts of creativity.

↘ Reggio Emilia approach (Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 2011) advocates that experiential learning takes place in relationship-driven environments.

↘ Peter Gloor’s (2005) Swarm Creativity which discusses self-organised, collaborative innovation networks enabled by the internet that share new ideas and work.

↘ Keith Sawyer’s (2017) Group Genius discusses the creative power of collaboration. Sawyer (2019) explains that although individuals exist, there are some creative processes and outcomes that depend on the interaction of group members and not the behaviour of individuals.

↘ Vlad Glăveanu’s (2014) Distributed Creativity where creative action is defined by social, material and cultural processes and over time.

Dr Clapp named eight crises of creativity in education to illustrate the misconceptions and barriers that hamper participation in creative activities. The eight crises evolve around the question of access, equity, and representation. He suggested it was potentially harmful to define creativity based on a culture of individualism.

Enacting Participatory Creativity

Dr Clapp states in his book Participatory Creativity (2017) that students’ learning or engagement with the creative process requires students to develop:

↘ Content-area knowledge and skills—acquiring new knowledge and skills to tackle problems and challenges faced along the way. This consideration might also include explanations of some theories on creativity to contextual students’ learning, such as the seven key characteristics of creative teams (Lim & Chin, 2018, p. 8).

↘ Intrapersonal and interpersonal skills—having socio-emotional competencies, self-regulation and metacognition to participate with a collective idea development process.

↘ A sense of self as a creative participant—it is more important to learn how to participate in creativity than think we first need to be creative to participate.

Participatory Creativity in the Art Classroom

I have picked out five “to-try” ideas from chapter eight of Dr Clapp’s book and added some art examples for our consideration. They are:

1. “Foreground the social nature of ideas”. We could give examples of “history of ideas”, highlighting how ideas grow best when we build on the ideas of others. We can “make creativity visible” by documenting and presenting the growth of ideas and contributions by individuals to the collective idea. If we can have individual journals for visual, verbal records of thoughts and ideas, why not have group visual journals, with suitable routines and work processes to facilitate the record-keeping? We could also expand our pool of artist references to include collective ideas from the domain of art, design, craft and media not just from Western traditions, but from Singapore, our region, and the world. For instance, the class could examine the creative processes and development of works by artist collectives, design studios, craft made collectively by craftspeople and independent video production teams. We could also turn our attention to school examples, foregrounding how teachers collaborate, teachers and students building on each other’s ideas to make better ideas in a discussion, project or school event.

2. “Provide opportunities for young people to connect and learn from others”. We could leverage on group projects within the same class so that students have the opportunity to work with and invent with one another. They could also present and share ideas with adjacent groups. In some instances, we can use authentic community projects to inspire our art projects in school. In situations that allow so, we encourage and facilitate students to find external knowledgeable others, and seek out different perspectives.

3. “Stress that creativity is neither a spark nor a flash of insight; creativity is purposeful work”. We could continue to stress the importance of intentional effort and time to develop ideas and acknowledge students’ effort accordingly. Creating an idea, even if it is built on the ideas of others, takes time. We can teach many creative processes in the art classroom. For instance, an overarching methodology that celebrates creativity as a socially and culturally distributed process is Design Thinking. Understanding the Design Thinking mindset, adopting its tools and strategies that best fit a particular group project or visual problem, can help students gain the confidence to work together.

4. “Honour and encourage individual student agency with the collective idea development process”. Students’ Drive (Pink, 2009)—their passion, autonomy and mastery—and what they bring with them to the collaborative process should be acknowledged and celebrated too. We could include components of individual work before the collective idea development process to instil accountability. We could also have time for personal reflection, and group reflection to uncover the growth of ideas, contributions by individuals to the collective idea, and how individuals benefited from the group. We could celebrate participation: discover the different roles students might play within a given timeframe, or over the course of the collaboration.

5. “Resist the urge to pigeonhole students and place them in boxes”. Each participant in the collaborative process can and should contribute in different roles and ways. We can tap on students’ potential to do something they are already good at or challenge them to stretch beyond their comfort zones. Besides assigning team roles (for example, facilitator, recorder, time-keeper and so on), we could define imaginative roles that require students to contribute to ideas equally, in different forms and formats, without prejudice to their learner profiles. One classic example that comes to mind is Edward De Bono’s (1985) Six Thinking Hats, where team members can wear six different coloured hats to adopt a particular stance to an idea: blue for big

Check This Out

A group art task can help bring out the desirable qualities of participatory creativity. Check out Making Art Collaboratively (2018), a teaching resource published by the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts, for lesson ideas and more information on designing collaborative art projects.

Watch these videos for ideas on how you can use the cards in class

↘ Watch them here

picture thinking, white for facts and information, red for feelings and emotions, black for negative, yellow for positive, and green for new ideas.

The list of ideas discussed in this article is not meant to be exhaustive. These are not ideas to try all at once, but perhaps best served as prompts as we reflect on our classroom practices. I hope they are practical ideas to help us help our students reclaim their creative selves. I hope the ideas shared are indicative of the tremendous potential and supporting role art education has to expand imaginations and creativity. If all these ideas sound confusing and complicated, that’s okay. As art professor Olivia Gude (2004) puts it, “art examples and projects in school art curricula should not be reductive representations of theoretical principles, but should reflect the complexity of actual art”. By exposing our students to some complexity, or “messiness” in incremental doses, we can develop our students’ tolerance for ambiguity, ability to work with others, and inclination to seek out different perspectives in the process. By structuring opportunities for all to make art collaboratively, and emphasising the “We” narrative of creativity in our classrooms, we might just be making small steps towards Singapore becoming greater Creative City. Every creative possibility can begin in our classrooms, one small step at the time.

References

Clapp, E. (2017). Participatory creativity: Introducing access and equity to the creative classroom. New York, NY: Routledge.

De Bono, E. (1985). Six thinking hats. Little Brown and Company.

DesignSingapore Council (2020). Singapore, UNESCO Creative City of Design [Webpage]. https://www.designsingapore. org/about-us/unesco-creative-city-ofdesign.html

Edwards, C., Gandini, L. & Forman, G. (Ed.) (2011). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Glăveanu, V. (2014). Distributed creativity: thinking outside the box of the creative individual. Springer.

Gloor, P. (2005). Swarm creativity: Competitive advantage through collaborative innovation networks. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gude, O. (2004). Postmodern principles: In search of a 21st century art education. Art Education, 57(1), 6-14.

Pink, D. (2009). Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us. Riverhead Books.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Selfdetermination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68-78.

Sawyer, K. (2019). Individual and group creativity. In Kaufman, J. C. & Sternberg, R. (Ed.) (2019). The Cambridge handbook of creativity. Cambridge University Press, pp. 567-586.

Sawyer, K. (2017). Group genius: The creative power of collaboration. (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Art Education in the Contemporary Age

Joscelin Chew

Art

Teacher

and Talk Shop Presenter

Yishun Innova Junior College

Artists today steer far beyond the classical and modernist practices towards contemporary approaches that not only challenge conventions but comprise a diversity of mediums and techniques in order to tackle different ideas. This is reflected in the current Study of Visual Arts (SoVA) syllabus with a wide range of artistic practices from realistic paintings to the use of new media. Along with the diverse needs of learners in our no-longer-onlyphysical classrooms, how can we increase learners’ engagement and understanding? I believe our role as art educators is crucial in designing and facilitating a range of learning experiences for our students, allowing them to embrace the diversity and uncertainty of the contemporary world.

↘ Watch here

Brewing SOVA and Studio by Ms Chew Jia Li Joscelin & Mr Abdul Hadi Abdul Wahab (Yishun Innova Junior College)

How do we then design and facilitate learning experiences for our diverse needs of learners?

Despite smaller class sizes at the Junior College level, we observe a range of learner profiles and needs. This is evident in our students’ experience of art making. Some had experienced art only at the lower secondary levels, whilst others had experienced art making through coursework—and even so, practiced different mediums and were interested in different ideas. As highlighted in the Pop-Up 10 presentation “Implementing Differentiated Instruction (DI) in the Art Classroom: The Deyi Experience” by Ms Michelle Chu, the notion of differentiation lies in tailoring instruction to the individual needs of the learners which includes their readiness, interests and learning profiles.

Likewise, DI is also apparent in the Talk Shop Presentation “Engaging Students through Graphic Interchange Format (GIFs)” by the teachers from Anthony’s Cannossian Secondary School, whereby the use of tiering encourages many ways of learning. This sharing was relevant because GIFs are popular and widely used amongst our students in their daily lives. Furthermore, students attempted the different tiers of instruction based on their level of readiness which was assessed when they were completing their digital portraits. The basic tier challenged students to change specific elements within their art work, while the advanced tier challenged students to create movement by animating the subject’s face and hair. Ultimately, we differentiate in order to close certain learning gaps towards achieving the lesson outcomes and to maximise students’ potential. My personal take on differentiation is that it gives students a level of autonomy to make choices and also increases levels of engagement. We can differentiate the art making process by allowing students to choose from various mediums and techniques that interest them and by having various tiers of challenge. Hence students can either hone their skills or stretch and experiment further with the possibilities of the medium.

↘ Watch it here

Engaging Students through Graphic Interchange Format (GIFs)

↘ Watch it here

Implementing Differentiated Instruction in the Art Classroom: The Deyi Experience

One example in my classroom is the use of Richard Serra’s Verblist, 1967—68, a compiled series of action words for students to choose from in order to make art. Keywords such as “to tear” and “to crease” act as prompts for students to create their own version of Earth Art. The essence of Serra’s Verblist echoes Nicholas Roukes’s Art Synectics and Bob Erberle’s SCAMPER technique in an attempt to stretch ideas and to develop creative thinking in the art making process. A similar resource available in your schools is the Making Art (2017) kit produced by STAR that offers lists of verbs, adverbs and materials to generate playful explorations of processes in the Art classroom, which can support differentiation via process.

A differentiated process leads to a wider range of artworks, which enriches the scope for artistic conversations in the classroom. An intriguing idea from Dr Edward P. Clapp’s keynote address was the paradigm shift of the traditional concept of individual creativity towards the concept of participatory creativity. The notion of individuals participating in the development of creative ideas illuminates the importance of artistic conversations in our classrooms. With that in mind, we should be mindful to encourage generative artistic conversations among our students through discussions about artworks and critique sessions. These conversations should let the diversity of viewpoints amongst our students emerge and inspire new ideas amongst their peers.

Ultimately, the challenge for us as art educators is to really understand the needs of our learners, to design and facilitate differentiated learning experiences, but more so to celebrate the diversity of artistic processes and viewpoints in our conversations within the classroom and in the art world.

Watch these videos for how these cards can be used in your classroom: ↘ Watch it here

Consider how you can apply the SCAMPER technique to develop your ideas / concept!

Substitute

How can you replace a part of the work with another subject matter?

Combine

How can you combine different materials, subject matter, ideas or point of views together?

Adapt Which aspects or characteristics of an artist work or art movement can you adapt?

Purpose

How can you portray the subject matter in a different way? How can you transform the original function of the subject matter?

Reverse

How can you change the order, layout or sequence of the work?

An adaptation of Bob Eberle’s SCAMPER technique for an art lesson from Scamper: Games for Imagination Development (1996)

Modify

How can you modify the elements of art within the work (e.g. scale, colour and form?)

Eliminate

Which aspects of the work are not necessary? What can be eliminated in this work to enhance the visual focus or meaning?

Consider how you can apply the following to develop your ideas / concept!

Selected keywords for an art lesson adapted from Nicholas Roukes’s Art Synectics (2006)

What about an inter or crossdisciplinary approach to art making in an increasingly diverse and uncertain world?

Art communicates ideas—ideas developed from our everyday experiences. We live in a diverse world so interconnected between different disciplines that it is crucial for our students to also appreciate its interconnectedness. I appreciate the Pop-Up 10 presentation “Capitalising on E-pedagogy in the Arts to Build Students as Generalists in a VUCA World” as Ms Iris Chia shared with us examples of cross-disciplinary lessons bridging art with drama and film studies. As we prepare students for the future workforce, STEAM education is very much crucial today. STEAM education brings together the five disciplines of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. This made me think about my past attempts in bridging the disciplines of art and math during a post-examination activity by using the concept of “coordinates” in creating pixel art! Besides, I think what makes artistic practices so beautifully diverse is the different backgrounds and identities of artists coupled with the ideas that they choose to explore. Turn towards the world around us and we observe Young British Artist Marc Quinn’s fascination with the relationship between art and science whilst Nam June Paik’s optimism about the potential of technology saw an interdisciplinary practice of performance, installation and sculpture. If we were all headed towards STEAM education, this will definitely involve teachers collaborating across departments to design learning experiences for students!

Capitalising on E-pedagogy in the Arts to Build Students as Generalists in a VUCA World

Watch it here

What are some key considerations as we now teach in our no-longeronly-physical classroom?

As we move towards incorporating blended learning in our 2021 curriculum, the learner’s role is significant. As educators, we want to encourage self-directed learning in our students. The Talkshop “Independent Discovery Through Collaborative Learning” by teachers from Teck Whye Secondary School and Dr Koh Bee Kim (Arts Education Branch) shared their approach to Knowledge Building by focusing on four main strategies— collaborative inquiry, collaborative ideation, individual creation through exploration and feedback and reflection. Their approach of using platforms like Coggle not only allows for their students to externalise their thoughts but also to learn collaboratively online and to reflect on their art making processes. Indeed, this example highlights the role of reflection as a significant part of learning, more so in a blended learning environment. We observe a parallel between students reflecting on their own learning, us reflecting on our teaching practice and artists as reflective practitioners.

Through the Arts Education Conference, I have gained various new ideas and insights to a wide range of approaches that art educators use across primary, secondary and junior colleges. It really gave me a good overview of the art education that my prospective students coming into the junior college level went through. The art education landscape is evolving, and I too am thinking about how to expose students to the interconnectedness between art and other disciplines, to utilise relevant technology in the creation of art, and to maximise their potential through differentiated instruction. In a nutshell, I want to help my students experience multiple modes of creating art that celebrates both the rich tactile experience of art making and the ‘paperless’ opportunities flourishing in our world today.

Independent Discovery Through Collaborative Learning

Diversity in the Fraternity

Jess Chen & Lorraine Lee

Academy Officers (Art)

STAR

Diversity amongst students is often talked about, but an aspect of diversity that is less explicitly discussed is that of our very own fraternity. Programmes by STAR—such as a|edge Exhibition, Critical Inquiry (CI) programmes and Art Teacher Practitioner Programme (ATPP)—seek to honor the differences amongst educators. In turn, the range of teachers’ art practice, areas of inquiry and backgrounds that the art teachers bring to STAR’s programmes have enriched the learning for the fraternity.

Photos on page 30—32 are from a;edge 2020’s opening on 3 March.

a|edge Exhibition: Celebrating the Fraternity’s Diverse Artistic Practices

Back when I was a teacher-in-training, a question came up one day in NIE: did I, and the trainees in my batch, consider ourselves ‘Artist-educators’ or maybe even ‘Educator-artists’?. It was a question that not many could answer at the drop of a hat. ‘Educator’?—a resounding yes. But how much art must one make to take on the mantle of ‘Artist’?

Shortly after I began teaching in school, the question still lingered, as did my perpetual wish to have more time and space to conceive, make and show my art. A colleague then offered her personal goal—to showcase her art publicly once a year. As a goal, it certainly felt SMART , and discipline aside, one only needed to seek an avenue to showcase one’s work. It was so elegant, I decided to adopt it too.

Admittedly, based on the circumstances of the particular year, this goal may or may not be reached. Yet each time it is realised, it reinforces my identity as an art practitioner. Whenever I get the chance to collaborate with or showcase my work amongst other art teachers, the pride of being amidst other Teacher-artists is life-giving.

a|edge, an acronym for ‘Art Educators Developmental and Generative Explorations’, is STAR’s annual art teacher’s exhibition to nurture the professional identity of art teachers as Teacher-artists. Since 2011’s Open Call and 2012’s launch of the first exhibition, a|edge has been encouraging Teacher-artists to continue to hone their artmaking through varied art practices that would deepen their pedagogical repertoire in the art classrooms.

*SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely

Through the experience of showcasing their work in a gallery, Teacher-artists gain an understanding of things to consider when setting up their work in a physical space and are refreshed by the experience of exhibiting their work among friends and colleagues. This renewed confidence can be translated back to exhibition practices for students in schools.

In 2016, the role of Teacher-curators was added to acknowledge the value that art teachers bring to the curation process, from the selection of the work, the dialogues between Curators and Teacher-artists, and putting the final pieces together to form a cohesive show. Shortly after, the role of Teacher-programmers and Teacher-designers were also added to form the team that leads the exhibition. Together, they envision the direction of the engagement and outreach, and the visual look of each iteration of a|edge.

Looking back at the past 9 years and forward to next year’s 10th iteration of a|edge, it is heartening to see how it has evolved to be teacher-led and continues to celebrate an eclectic mix of art forms and the individual and collective voices from our fraternity.

Visit https://staraedge.com/ for more information about a;edge 2020, and watch the space for information about a x edge 2021 launching in March 2021.

Critical Inquiry: the Reflective Practitioner in Teaching

“Commitment to action research positions teachers and administrators as learners rather than experts. Those committed to action research will willingly undertake continued professional development because they believe that there is a gap between the real world of their daily teaching practices and their vision of an ideal one.” (Mills, 2018).

The Critical Inquiry (CI) programme at STAR empowers teachers to take on the role of Teacher-researchers and be engaged in collaborative reflective inquiry into their own classroom practice in a systematic way.

Through an independent CI Project, teachers embrace a spirit of inquiry, reflect on their own teaching and work towards refining their instructional practices to continually improve student learning. During the critical inquiry process, teachers identify their students’ learning gaps, generate possible ideas for such gaps and brainstorm specific research questions, narrowing the areas they wish to investigate. They will then embark on a literature review, which will provide foundational knowledge about the problem area.

CI Projects workshop in February 2020.

This is followed by developing possible intervention ideas and strategies to close the learning gaps, deciding on research methodology and data to collect and implementing the plan. Finally, the Teacher-researcher will analyse the data, share the results and provide recommendations for the fraternity.

Each year, teachers embark on this journey from different starting points, leading to a diverse range of topics including: how to develop students to be reflective practitioners in art, how museum-based learning can empower students and how the classroom environment can be tweaked to prime students for more effective learning. The multiple insights gained from the CI Project, that is specific to the Teacher-researcher’s context, enables the art teacher to confidently take / repeat targeted actions.

Some of their journeys are detailed in previous STAR posts, or in publications available on our website.

From 2021, STAR will be mounting the Critical Inquiry Projects for Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) and Differentiated Learning (DI) under SkillsFuture for Educators (SFed—Leading). Interested applicants may write to MTT Victoria Loy (Victoria_LOY@moe.gov.sg) and AO Lorraine Lee (Lorraine_lee@moe.gov.sg) for more information.

Teachers present their CI process and findings during a CI Share Fair in October 2019.

Art Teacher Practitioner Programme: Where the Differences

Make a Difference

Art Teacher Practitioner Programme (ATPP) is a 6-month programme that aims to equip primary school art teachers with basic studio and pedagogical skills for art teaching, nurturing their professional identities as Teacher-artists and Learning Designers.

Over the years, we have seen a diverse spectrum of teachers in ATPP, from HODs to teachers relatively new in the service. We even have Mother Tongue teachers who took the leap of faith to change their Curriculum Subject (CS) to pursue their dreams of teaching art. While diversity has its challenges in the art classroom, I would like to instead celebrate the rich diversity of our ATPP teachers and highlight how their differences bring a kaleidoscopic range of perspectives and practices to the table.

During the programme, opportunities for meaningful and impactful learning experiences are constantly created, and teachers are guided to discover their unique voice as part of the larger community of voices. A culture of inclusivity is fostered right from the start to make teachers feel that their opinions matter, and that the unique perspectives stemming from their varied teaching experiences are the catalysts for robust discussions. With these norms in place, we started to see the effects of diversity and the advantages that it brings to the programme.

“Through ATPP, I met many wonderful teachers from diversified backgrounds who shared a common goal, which is to enrich our students’ Art learning experiences. Not only was I learning from my instructors, I was also learning so much from my fellow course mates. I believe that diversity in practice is essential to encourage open and meaningful discussions within the teaching fraternity.”

Nur Mazuin Bte Ab Hamid, 12th ATPP Lakeside Primary School

Diversity Promotes Creativity and Innovation

Creativity is a participatory act. It was observed that the more ATPP teachers questioned each other and provided constructive feedback to improve each other’s work, the more the group made better decisions and pushed the boundaries to arrive at creative and innovative ideas. The ATPP Exhibition is one good example of how bouncing ideas off of each other during the group consultation sessions propelled teachers to explore ideas that they would not have imagined alone.

12th ATPP (2019—2020) Art Exhibition: A platform where the diverse voices of ATPP teachers were celebrated.

Diversity Provokes Critical & Divergent Thinking

“Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.” (Phillips K. W., 2014) According to Phillips, when teachers hear dissent from someone whom they view as different from them, they tend to associate that viewpoint with novelty, which provokes more thought than when it is heard from someone similar. For the same reason, it was intriguing to hear ATPP teachers present their viewpoints as an Instructional Programme (IP) or music teacher as that drove them to think about new possibilities in different directions.

As diversity becomes a norm in this rapidly globalised world, it is important to manage and embrace diversity in practice, especially in the area of education. I believe that fostering a wider appreciation for the differences amongst us will enrich our individual and collective experiences.

13th ATPP (2020—2021) Art Camp: Tape Art workshop—where ATPP teachers were encouraged to tap on each other’s personal experiences and understanding of the 32 artworks in the Primary Art Syllabus to collaboratively create a tape art in response to the selected artworks.

References

Phillips, K. W. (2014). How Diversity Makes Us Smarter. Retrieved from https://www. scientificamerican.com/article/howdiversity-makes-us-smarter/

Mills, G.E. (2018). Action research: A guide for the teacher research. New York, NY: Pearson.

Art Masterclass 1: Picturing times (/three) when …

Presented by Hilmi Johandi

Facilitated by

MTT Victoria Loy

Written by teacher participants from the Drawing Network Learning Community (NLC):

Teh Ting Ting

Lead Teacher

CHIJ Secondary (Toa Payoh)

Nonis Liane Joy Wei Ling

Art Teacher

Woodlands Ring Primary School

Ho Su Yin Grace

Art Teacher

Xinmin Secondary School

What is it like journeying through an artist’s workflow?

Experiencing an artmaking activity that resembles an artist’s investigative process provides a fascinating glimpse into his experiences, memories, influences, concepts and preferences.

Hilmi Johandi, known for his poignant and cinematic works, distils his practice of appropriating film, archival footage and photographs into a manageable collage activity that you can try at home or in your classrooms!

Activity Brief

Big Idea:

Art tells stories about our world

Aims:

↘

To discover an artistic process that blends personal memories through a montage of visual fragments that transforms space and time.

↘ To explore the juxtaposition of lines, shapes, forms and readymade images.

Elegant Art Task:

Create a mixed media collage using printed copies of your own photographs or found images from the past, which capture three different moments in your life: childhood, 5 years and 10 years ago, to depict the distinct instances in time in one frame.

Enabling Constraints:

↘ Material constraint: A4 / A3-sized drawing paper, printed copies of 3 photographs, adhesive glue, cutter / scissors, dry media (pencil, pen, coloured pencils, markers)

↘ Process constraint: 20 minutes

↘ Format constraint: A4 / A3-sized drawing paper

In-person teacher-participants (from left to right) Zaki Zulfakar, Teh Ting Ting, Melinda Tan and artist Hilmi Johandi posing with their completed collages.

Our Artworks

I really enjoyed piecing together images taken of my form class over the last 2 years. The process brought back many good memories. It was cool to experience the many subtle thought processes that went through my mind as I figured out where to place the cut-outs. It was a rather therapeutic art-making process, cutting up photographs that evoked many fond memories of my form class.

I particularly enjoyed moving the pictures about and watching how different images could interact and combine to create a narrative. I chose images from the 2019 P5 camp and NE show, two of my best memories, where I got to see the personalities of my pupils at the forefront.

I enjoyed it so much I’m toying with the idea of making one at the end of each year as a visual diary for my teaching career.

Nonis Liane Joy

Wei Ling

Woodlands Ring Primary School

Memories of 5 / 6 Orchid

↘ Self-taken images of form class across a span of two years

Collage

My mini digital collage is a reflection of my nostalgia for Chinatown, where I grew up. It represents my memory of accompanying my grandma to the marketplace. I can still remember that the marketplace was situated right below the shophouses and that it reeked of fish stench everywhere. Where were the hidden wild cats then? I wish we could recreate that community hustle and bustle, where smiles were exchanged everywhere.

When creating the image, I wanted to emphasise my memories of the place rather than the historical context of the location. To do so, I deliberately chose coloured images of the animals like the cat, buffalo, and fishes to be placed on the sepia coloured historic photograph. The juxtaposition of placing coloured images against a sepia photograph is an attempt to draw the viewer’s attention to what I have selectively remembered.

The layout of the external elements are placed in a way that creates a visual hierarchy, guiding the viewer to see the foreground first, then the middle ground and finally the background. This is to slowly guide the viewer into remembering the sights and smells of what we have taken for granted. By doing so, I hope the viewer can discover what they might have missed out on in the old streets of Singapore.

I think a lot about sounds and also the many places that I have been. This artwork led me to think about potential narratives that I can create by looking back into my childhood.

Ho Su Yin Grace

Xinmin Secondary School

Capture and Recapture Those Memories!

↘ Found images from magazines and the internet relating to memories and sights of childhood days

↘ Digital collage

I have always loved taking photographs of roads, railway tracks and one-point perspectives of scenes wherever I go. When the task brief was given, I asked myself two fundamental questions:

↘ What photographs should I choose and for what purpose?

Since I would be intersecting between time and place, it could be possible to try to gather photographs from different locations and create a pseudo make-believe scene. Hence, I adopted a structured approach by obtaining images that fulfil the one-point perspective criteria for a symmetrical composition.

↘ What steps do I have to take to ensure the completion of this work within an hour? (I had more time as an on-site participant).

I zoomed in on creating an achromatic work to ensure coherence. A preliminary sketch was also done to assess the feasibility of the combination of images but I changed a fair bit during the actual artmaking exercise. Given more time, it would definitely be more enjoyable to move the cut objects around and have some accidental fun!

The entire process from relooking at moments in the past, to finding parallels and visual connections, to envisioning, creating and making alterations along the way was more therapeutic and insightful than I expected. This experience allowed me to revisit and restructure my memories at Toa Payoh during my childhood years, Nepal trek ten years ago and the wintry Poland five years ago.

Teh Ting Ting

CHIJ Secondary (Toa Payoh)

Intersections

↘ Found images of childhood days, combined with self-taken travel photographers 5 and 10 years ago

↘ Collage with black pencil

Key Learning Points

The process of preparing and selecting image fragments from the photos meant that we had to brainstorm different visual and narrative combinations. This conjured memories of the past while giving rise to various questions—how might we represent these memories in a different way? What aspects are important to retain?

Hilmi suggested a few useful considerations that are essential throughout our creative and critical thinking process:

↘ Use of Visual Imagery: Representation of the theme / idea by choosing visuals that may be fragments from our lived experiences, including personal memories and space

↘ Choice of Layout: Placement of the selected images in consideration of elements of art and principles of design

↘ Conceptual Meaning: Critical reflection on the significance of objects, subjects and places to construct a new meaning

↘ Potential of Narrative: Viewing the work as an opportunity to further discover and experiment, rather than a concluding idea

As teacher-participants, the three of us modified the tasks by setting our own enabling constraints and took on different visual and conceptual approaches. Feel free to sample our choice of enabling constraints that includes choice of theme, source of images and materials used.

New Insights and Possible Extensions into Teaching of Art

This activity is great as a trigger or experimental exercise where students are able to move their chosen images around to compose different layouts and explore ideas. As the activity can be completed in a shorter span of time, students can try out options in a playful manner without fear of a ‘wrong’ answer. Instead, they can be guided to self-evaluate the success of their pieces. There is also opportunity for differentiation by process, where teachers can guide students to create works under different conditions, such as the number of images or colours that can be used, types of dry or wet media that can be applied, and the scale of artworks.

This could be a really meaningful post-PSLE activity for the students to document and reflect on their Primary school journey. The photos can be easily printed, and the Primary 6 students will be able to reflect upon their best memories of Primary school life through impactful imagery.

Through visual storytelling via juxtaposition of photographs from different periods from their past, students can create their own mixed-media collage. Thereafter, students can collaborate with their peers to form an extension of a continuous narrative. Interdisciplinary aspects such as the creation of sound effects can also be done to provide a more cinematic perspective to their collaborations during their oral presentations of their work.

Gallery of works from Masterclass 1

Teacher-participants were encouraged to upload their completed artworks onto the AEC website. We received many playful and personal responses on the Padlet. Here are some of them:

Zurainah Binte Ahmid South View Primary School

Transitions

A juxtaposition of cultural and travel experiences. Celebrating Raya with the family in a Malaysian kampung, it is ironic that mother attired me in western garb, a contrast to the traditional attire donned by the rest of the family. Against a backdrop of the Maeklong Railway Market in Thailand, and the windmills of Holland in the distance, this nostalgic piece explores the idea of identity, cultural movement and transitions.

Nadirah Binte Baharin East Spring Primary School

Recreating Memories

This artwork is a Juxtaposition of the past and present.

The background is a photo that I captured recently at the beach, while the foreground is a cut-out of my ‘O’ Level installation artwork from 11 years ago. The two elements are deliberately placed together as such to bring out the scene that I had in mind back then when I was painting that very same artwork. It sure took me down a nostalgic memory lane as I reminisced the past.

I would like to thank Mr. Hilmi for the session and sharing as I am now able to express and bring back the fond memories and recreate them through this artwork, in this present moment.

Tan Ji Mei Melinda

Ang Mo Kio Secondary

Illusion of Space

Merging of what’s real and imaginative prompts us to critically rethink whether the composed image is real or just an illusion. Cropped photos are evidence / traces of my history, yet the composed image seems to tell a different story. The fine line between what’s real and unreal deeply excites me.

Fong Yan Kin

Palm View Primary School

Time Travel

‘Time travel’ is a juxtaposition created from repeating rectangular frames and extending diagonal lines to unite 3 photos. One of them is from my army days—the retro car reminds me of “Back to the Future” series. The other two photos are from my study trip to Europe as a student and my holiday in Korea with my family.

Nurmasnita Binte

Mohd Dena

Dunman Secondary School

Playful Play

The main background that was utilised a lot is a photograph from Ho Chi Minh (5 years ago). It holds a significant bad and good memory. This artwork is a playful composition, experimenting with duplicated images, various sizes, colours and lines. Using the existing diagonal lines from the busy road of Ho Chi Minh was interesting. I also used the unique cars from Ho Chi Minh as ‘toys’, placing them together with a nostalgic memory from my childhood. Thank you for this interesting lesson. I’m sure students will enjoy it as much as I did.

Chua Lee Beng

St Anthony’s Canossian Primary School

Mummy and Me

Last minute picks of a childhood picture with my mum and siblings, and recent travel photos with mum to Taiwan and another with friends to Bhutan. The work leaned towards being a little religious at first, but I decided to just focus on mum and me. As my mum passed away earlier this year (2020), I got a little emotional. As I edited the image repeatedly, it somehow ended up with less of the cuttings than what I had started with. Perhaps due to overthinking and over-processing? It was fun putting the cuttings together though. I think the choice of images to start with is important. Thank you Hilmi for a simple and fun collage making session that could be meaningful for participants.

Mehrun Nisha

Gong Shan Primary School

Family Holiday

This artwork is a collage of photo prints and drawings. My aim was to depict the holiday spirit of the times I spent with my family 15 years ago and 5 years ago. The past and present photos will show contrast in the characters’ age and places. I have manipulated space by enlarging the snowy landscape by cutting it up and adding images in between, then drawing details to merge the photo and canvas as naturally as possible. Some photos were also printed in various sizes to provide variety and emphasis. The topic was initially to portray some kind of perspective but the images collected were more suitable for a simpler collage style of work.

Zaki Zulfaka B Mohamed Noordin

Marsiling Secondary School

Reminiscing Life Over Kopi

My father drinks kopi and recalls life’s milestones; my boy looks on curiously as he revisits his unconscious memories of emerging from the birth canal (represented by the trail or route of life) and follows the toy car (my childhood memorabilia). This is juxtaposed with dad’s image during the exhumation of mum’s grave (end of life) where hope (prayer) and grief (tears) intermingle.

Lisa Zhang

Springfield Secondary School

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

The collage making session facilitated by artist Hilmi Johandi during the 2020 Arts Education e-Conference was so satisfying to participate in. In art lessons, we create and facilitate such opportunities for our students to express ideas through image curation and collage making but find ourselves unable to make time for ourselves to do the same. This quick and inventive workshop allowed me to be a student again and to enjoy the process of art making, using easily found first hand photographs and the humble scissors and glue! Thank you Hilmi Johandi and STAR for the enjoyable art experience!

Sazali Bin Rahmat Spectra Secondary School

Nostalgia

I grew up in a kampong. Using Photoshop, I tried to link the kampong house stairs to the playground slide to show how I enjoyed playing from the days in the kampong to old Clementi. I realised how much Clementi has changed in the background. I contrasted the black and white photo with the coloured photo in order to represent the differences between the past and present.

Tok Wei Yuan Yew Tee Primary School

Engaging Inspiration

Thinking of collage in terms of spaces and backgrounds is a novel and interesting approach and should help inform my own teaching in terms of collage. I am also interested in video collage for potential collaborative pieces with my students in school.

Art Masterclass 2: Telling Stories through Art

Presented by Ciel Liu and Lee Xin Li

Facilitated by MTT Chun Wee San

Artists are storytellers. From documenting momentous events to capturing lived experiences of everyday people to sharing personal narratives, artists sensitise us to the world around us through the stories they tell. Multi-disciplinary artist Ciel Liu and illustrator Lee Xin Li shared how they push creative boundaries and expand their imagination to explore new ways of seeing, experiencing and understanding the world.

In Connecting Audience with Meaningful Stories, Ciel presented how to select crucial information and create the right storyline to effectively engage and connect with the audience. Taking reference from her past projects in Singapore and Japan, the artist shared behind-scenes stories to help us understand her thinking and planning process to create compelling video content that captivates and inspires the audience.

In his presentation Finding Stories in Illustration, Lee Xin Li shared about the inspiration and process behind his illustrations. Xin Li spoke also about how the developments in technology over the years have influenced his work and his approaches towards illustration.

MTT Mdm Chun Wee San, STAR facilitator for the Masterclass with Ms Ciel Liu (centre) and Mr Lee Xin Li (on right)

↘ Watch this masterclass here

How has your background in journalism and photography influenced your videos?

It was my early career in journalism which influenced me to make videos with an informative purpose. Most of my stories are factual pieces but I wanted to add the artistic touch and empathetic tone to engage people, rather than hard facts.

Photography sensitised me to aesthetic considerations such as the use of colour, light, space, symmetry to capture better shots. It also made me think about the composition and meaning in a still shot, and how it would look like in a continuous motion to convey meaning.

In your bio, you mentioned that you aim to “find the intersection between practicality and artistry”, how did you go about doing that?

Clients will bring you a set of expectations to be fulfilled— sometimes it can be pretty dry and commercialised, and it is therefore my job to try to mellow it down, package it artistically so it still contains the essential message, but tell it in a more understandable, easy-to-digest and relatable manner.

Q&A with Ciel Liu

Interestingly, I noticed a lot of clients in Singapore are looking for fast and cheap solutions, and tend to not understand the time, thought and creative process required to create valuable works. I understand it’s how we are often made to be practical and efficient, but I try to engage them early on in the process to encourage them to create with me and feel a sense of ownership.

What do you enjoy about the work of documentary videos?

I enjoy travelling to different countries, meeting, talking to and really connecting with people who would otherwise never cross paths with me. It’s all the small moments of being a part of their lives that makes the most memorable experience. I think I really like videos which are able to share a piece of another human’s life and connect to audiences despite cultural differences. Each story can be an opportunity to gain new insights and understanding.

Some memorable experiences include being invited to have homemade green tea and local fruits in a small house by the mountains in Shimane prefecture and tasting family dishes freshly cooked by a granny on a fire stove in Tsunan-Niigata. Another perk is getting inside places no tourists can access, like the Skytree staff elevator, where there are only three buttons by heights and no floors.

What is the best piece of advice you have received as a filmmaker / an illustrator? And what advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers / illustrators?

That sometimes you do not need to see an immediate reason to do everything. If you start doing instead of thinking all day, it will come to you. The process will teach you many things, and looking at the works you have created will give you clarity to seek improvement.

What do you hope your audience can take-away from your artworks, besides the stories told through the works?

That the best stories are all around us, if we can spend time to see, think and connect the meaning in ordinary things. The intention to think is already creating meaning.

What are some apps and / or softwares that you use and would recommend for beginning digital illustrators?

I use Adobe Photoshop CC mainly for my digital illustration work on a desktop. On mobile devices like the iPad Pro, I use Procreate and for Samsung Galaxy Tab S7, I use a mix of Clip Studio, Adobe Sketch and Autodesk Sketchbook.

What are some challenges / obstacles that you faced when creating digital illustration? How did you overcome them?

For creating digital illustration, like creating artwork in general, there are times when one has a creative block, I find taking time off helps even if one is uncomfortable with taking time off work. The break and focusing on something different provide opportunities for gaining new insights and perspectives.

Specific to digital illustration, while there are limitations posed by what technology offers and the capabilities of the equipment and finances of the individual, I find that these could also be opportunities on how to deal with these in a creative way: such as finding a style that

Q&A with Lee Xin Li

works or a work process that could overcome these limitations. As technology is also developing, I feel the main obstacle is mental inertia or oneself: i.e. the fear of trying out new things or not being focused on the stuff that matters due to the abundance of information. This could also hurt financially due to the limited time one has.

Do you have a preference between analogue or digital illustration? How might others who are more used to pencil and paper illustration approach digital illustration?

I do both and do not have a particular preference. While most of my works are mainly digital, I still do a lot of sketching on pen and paper especially during my travels. To me, whether it is virtual reality, digital space, or fine art paper, they are all canvases. It is not too different from photography with film and digital. I think the real question is down to what works for the subject matter or the individual based on the context or brief.

How do you see illustration in the digital era (e.g. illustrating in virtual reality such as Google Tilt Brush, or other digital formats such as AR, 360)? What might the future of digital illustration be like?

I think one can find the answer in history. Illustration will continue to develop in tandem with technology like how the introduction of print, film, photography, mass production of high-quality paints etc. shaped the art world. Thus, for illustration in the future, the tools and media simply evolve with the technology : 360 illustrations, augmented reality, virtual reality etc. are new tools or canvases.

Perhaps, what is accepted as illustration or who is the role of the creator might change over time: e.g. A.I doing an illustration based on an algorithm created by an artist. Fundamentally, while tools will evolve, and debates continue on what is Art and what is the role of Art, the act of creating art will probably remain the same. I find joy, meaning and relevance in doing illustrations. I am open to whatever comes along the way, I am happy doing a quick animation of a pigeon at a hawker centre on a tablet as much as I doing a traditional drawing on a sketchbook in a coffeeshop.

Teacher Participants’ Reflections

Art is sometimes conceived through accidental means. This can give the wrong perception that Art does not require the same diligence like other academic subjects. I am particularly glad that Ciel shared the use of storyboarding at the start of her work and Xin Li shared his countless drawings generated through Circuit Breaker. Their sheer resilience and the amount of time put into their artworks demonstrates the importance of experimentation in the mastery of their respective mediums. Xin Li’s foray in drawing digitally in the virtual space also brought many possibilities to illustrators.

I am keen to show their works to students to show that during the pandemic many things still can be achieved… even with Safe Management Measures in place. Perhaps students will be inspired to have an open mindset and challenge themselves beyond my HBL lessons.

Art Teacher

St.

Gabriel’s Secondary School

Kelvin Lim Fung Chee

With growing prospects in the art industry, it is not uncommon for students these days to dream of being illustrators, animators, make-up artists, fashion designers, graphic designers, photographers—the possibilities are endless! It is important that we, as art teachers, ensure that our students are equipped with not only fine art skills, but skills in thinking creatively for them to flourish in a world undergoing rapid technological change. The e-AEC’s Art Masterclass: Telling Stories Through Art has inspired me to take the first steps towards providing this for my students.

Ciel and Xin Li demonstrated that the use of videos, visuals and illustrations adds a more personal and progressive dimension to storytelling. I was very excited for the chance to “meet” Xin Li, whose 360° artwork on HDB life during Circuit Breaker inspired me to design a digital storytelling project for my students. It was not easy learning and teaching how to do a detailed drawing on the 360° drawing grid, and coordinating the students’ uploads onto virtual reality apps such as Panaform and TourCreator, but through collaboration with my level teachers, the hard work was worth it. The students’ smiles and squeals as they navigated through their drawings in virtual reality was worth all the effort. I am definitely hooked, and excited to learn and explore new approaches to art in my classroom.

Noor Ezaida Binte Abdul Rahman

Art Teacher

Unity Primary School

P5 students from Unity Primary School depicting scenes of HDB life in the new normal through 360° drawings.

Click to see more 360° artwork by students:

↘ Delwyn Seah

↘ Kanwar Siddharth

↘ Phyllis Chang

↘ Aqil

↘ Habriyah Iynsyirah

The masterclass by Ciel Liu Bei and Lee Xin Li provided me with a balanced perspective of how one can create meaningful artwork that embraces both the traditional and contemporary design elements, informing the way I will guide my students through a stop motion project.

Through the sharing by Ciel, I got to understand how to weave in compelling narratives to make more purposeful and meaningful videos. Various elements can be considered—such as being rich in content and information, and the use of interesting characters that would evoke emotion and empathy from the viewers. Xin Li’s sharing was a perfect example of how students can make their props and drawings better, which would eventually lead to a good stop motion animation.

I felt that teaching stop motion goes beyond just the technical aspects—a good animation comes from one that is both rich in story and visuals such as scenes and props. Students should continue to record what they see and try to link these drawings together to form a story. Bringing a camera or a small sketchbook around as a habit would be a good start to capture what one sees and observes. I hope to cultivate more awareness in my students and encourage them to see things beyond what they seem to be on the surface.

Sharin Bin Sulaiman Head of Department (Aesthetics) Chongfu School

Students from Chongfu School creating work during a stop motion animation module.

How to Transform Your Teaching Practice and Get Your Sleep

Hazel Huang

Art Coordinator and Pop-Up 10 Presenter

Changkat Primary School

If there is a piece furniture at home that I cannot do without, it has to be my bed. I can sit on the floor, work on the kitchen top or style the room with a few stacked books. But everything feels better after a good night’s sleep. Teachers often wear eye bags, dark circles and back pain as our badge of honour. This does not have to be the way as it is not a sustainable way of living. Resting our mind and body is the core of everything we do. There are times where I felt and performed less than optimal because I am only human. I believe you too. Hence, I want to share with you how we can all uplift each other through PD and at the same time, take good care of ourselves and our families.

Art Teachers as Bloggers

Watch it here

Everyone Wants a Piece of the Art Teacher

As the art teacher in schools, chances are you are the go-to person for all things related to aesthetics. Be it your opinion for the pantone for a new slick of paint, identifying that correct shade of white or telling someone that the glue stick will not do for his soon-to-fall-off shoe sole. Anecdotes aside, I am sure there are times where you have had to juggle various tasks at once.

In 2020, we are invited to rethink and change many of our routines, processes and systems that we have taken for unmodifiable. While this may seem like another item on an ever-growing to-do list, I believe that experimenting with new approaches—be it tapping into teacher-led resources or technology—may help us manage our workload in the long run. Roy T. Bennett once said that Change begins at the end of your comfort zone. How then might teachers use innovative approaches to support the diverse learning needs of students— and ourselves—in the 21st century art classrooms?

Documentation Creates Conversations Concerning Education

Education requires collaboration between students, teachers and parents. And yet, sometimes we can feel disconnected. Making our observations visible might help resolve this enigma. Our professions can be shared and others will learn about our struggles and victories in the classroom. Over time, there will be interactions and these conversations are vital for successful education.

On 10th and 11th Nov 2020, a total of 75 schools contributed to the biennial Arts Education Conference (AEC) held online jointly organised by the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts (STAR) and the Arts Education Branch (AEB). Fret not if you have missed this event because all activities were recorded and available for educators.

Tapping into Teacher-led Resources

The online materials are produced by educators through their personal experiences. As the saying goes, ten years of work for every minute on stage. You are bound to find something that inspires, reinvigorates and energises you. If enough people start engaging, the outcome will surely be positive change. Watch the Talk Shop presentation ‘Drawing Differently’ on how Ms Angelina Chia (Tampines North Primary School) and Ms Jasjit Kaur (St Hilda’s Primary School) came together for the event. Their partnership during the Network Learning Committee (NLC) and Drawing Symposium brought them to share their journeys for the lesson ideas about making unconventional drawing tools to ignite students’ imagination.

I also found some useful teaching ideas that can be adapted to the primary school context from the Talk Shop presentation ‘Think Like a Designer’ by Ms Sophia Natasha Wei Junhao and Mr Alan Huang Han Hui from Methodist Girls’ School. They have successfully integrated web-based softwares, authentic learning, collaborative peers’ evaluation, multi-modal processes as well as meeting the learning needs of their students.

The Art of Blending

During the last few weeks of school in Term 4 2020, there was a sudden surge of students in my school drawing characters from Among Us—an online multiplayer game. I couldn’t help but wonder what hooks such games employ to engage players. If it has something to do with the multimodal approach that enhances the players’ experience, look no further than the Talk Shop presentation ‘Microsites for Blended Learning Experiences’ by the art teachers from CHIJ Our Lady of the Nativity. They have skillfully put together a microsite that helps them to teach more effectively. The students can revisit the concepts and materials taught at home at their own pace. This approach can also empower students to accelerate their learning by visiting new concepts and becoming more self-directed.

Microsites for Blended Learning Experiences

↘ Watch it here

Drawing Differently

Watch it here

Think Like a Designer

Watch it here

Why Metaphors Matter

Teachers are not just facilitators in the classroom. They are masters in communication. Presenters from National Junior College cleverly use metaphors in their Talk Shop presentation ‘Guided Autonomy in Art Education: When Do We Draw A Bigger Box?’ to help teachers make sense of their concepts by connecting it back to something in the real world. This is a prime example of using a new approach to communicate ideas effectively—innovation need not always be technological.

Be Like Water

Metaphorically speaking, teachers need to possess a magical skill—the need to be fluid. Bruce Lee said that we should be formless and shapeless, be like water making its way through cracks. We need to be able to adapt our mindsets, beliefs and actions to the circumstances at hand. To create a 20 minutes video from scratch, I sometimes used at least half a day to film and edit. Do I get an adrenaline rush from video editing? No, I don’t. But here’s a trick to get started. Care about the long-term results and the lessons learnt from the cumulative knowledge those moments give you but ignore any shortterm rewards or failures. Care about your teaching intentions as a whole but don’t fret about every individual post or video that you have made or else you would never get anything done. Unlike urgent things, the important has little impact on the short term, but it compounds and adds up. Tune in to chirpy presenter, Ms Nurul I’zzah Binte Basiron from De La Salle School in her recorded Pop-Up 10 video ‘Grab Them or Lose Them’ as she talks about creating demonstration videos for students. She has practical advice for teachers who are keen to get started.

Guided Autonomy in Art Education: When Do We Draw a Bigger Box?

↘ Watch it here

Grab Them or Lose Them

↘ Watch it here

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Think big, start small. It is tempting to become comfortable in our teaching and do things the way we have always done. Yet sometimes, the smallest change will yield big results. While we aspire to transform our teaching practice each year, tapping into resources that fellow teachers have shared as well as new technologies could assist us to do so in a manageable manner. As your heads hit the pillows tonight, think about how these presenters have harnessed the affordances of technology to create winwin situations and dream about how you may do that too.

Behind the Scenes

MTT Chua Siew Ling with AEC 2020 Secretariats, SAO Josephine Chan and AO Jess Chen, overseeing the flow of events.

Emcee Marianne Woo introducing participants to the day’s programme.

MTT Victoria Loy skilfully facilitating Art Masterclass 1, “Picturing times (/three) when…”.

MTT Chun Wee San greeting participants at the beginning of Art Masterclass 2, “Telling Stories Through Art”.

DD (Music) James Lee (left) and MTT Lim Kok Boon (right) conversing before the Keynote Address by Dr. Edward Clapp, Principal Investigator, Harvard Project Zero.

DD (Art) Seow Ai Wee discussing insights with AO Alyvn Eng.

SAO Heryanty Mohd Yahaya checking in on the Pop-Up 10 Presentations with Studio Assistant Chow Huiru.

Day 1 and day 2’s group shots at the Raffles City Convention Centre, where the live sessions were filmed.

Art Teachers (from left to right) Phang Bi Yun, Soh Hwee Ling, and Subject Head (Aesthetics) Aziana Aziz from Yishun Primary School setting up for their Talk Shop presentation, Developing Social-Emotional Competencies through Digital Art.

Art Lead Teacher Irisse Keh Hwee Peng (middle) and Art Teachers Joo Chan Hock and Pooja Kanade Pramod from Hua Yi Secondary School zoom meeting MTT Seow Ai Wee to prepare their presentation in the lead-up to the conference.

Lead Teacher (Art) Ira Wati Sukaimi and Art Teacher Nurulhuda Mustafa from Mayflower Secondary School posing with their memojis, which acted as the on-screen narrators for their Talk Shop presentation about SOLO Taxonomy.

Art and Interdisciplinary Talk Shops

Want to switch things up in the art classroom? Curious about what fellow teachers are up to? Tune in to Talk Shop—pre-recorded presentations for e-AEC 2020— where teachers share fresh lesson ideas and talk about anything ranging from comics to collaboration, diversity to digital illustration.

Art

A Spiral Approach to Art Curriculum Design

Art educators are designers of learning. With the spiral curriculum, we aim to have impactful art teaching which connects with students’ prior experiences, makes learning meaningful and ignites their passion for art.

Watch here

Mdm Lem Li Kuen

Zhenghua Primary School

Ms Ler Jia Yi

Fuhua Primary School

Mdm Chan Lay Mun

Hazel

Westwood Primary School

View the showcase for Art and Interdisciplinary Talk Shops

↘ Watch them here

Be a Surrealist artist!

Join our Primary 6 students, as we journey through an inquiry into Surrealist art. With blended learning approach, students were engaged in self-discovery and creative thinking in their art making.

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Ms Glenda Ding

Mdm Nur Ainninah

Mrs Cylvi Lim

Horizon Primary School

Brewing SOVA and Studio

How do we create learning experiences for students to better understand formal qualities of artworks and art techniques? Our spiced-up recipe will be shared.

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Ms Chew Jia Li

Joscelin

Mr Abdul Hadi Abdul Wahab

Yishun Innova Junior College

Developing Social-Emotional Competencies Through Digital Art

An approach towards an authentic digital Art experience coupled with the development of Social-Emotional (SE) competencies. Leveraging art-related applications such as KaleidoPaint, pupils acquire self-management skills whilst engaging in self-expression.

Drawing Differently

Drawing can be fun while fostering innovative thinking. Join us on a journey to discover a whole new world through drawing in unconventional ways.

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Ms Aziana Aziz

Ms Phang Bi Yun

Mdm Soh Hwee Ling

Yishun Primary School

Watch here

Ms Angelina Chia

Tampines North Primary School

Ms Jasjit Kaur

St Hilda’s Primary School

Engaging Students through Graphic Interchange Format (GIFs)

Join us to learn how to create a GIF portrait in just 4 steps. Adapt it to your art lessons to engage the students and stretch their creativity.

Guided

Autonomy

in

Art Education: When Do We Draw A Bigger Box?

Autonomy is a pivotal element that can empower students to be stronger thinkers and better innovators. As their teachers, we need to embody the true spirit of experimentation.

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Ms Chiu Yun Ting

Mr Muhammad

Nasiruddin Razak

Ms Quah Mei Fang

Amanda

St. Anthony’s Canossian Secondary School

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Mr Teo Chor Howe

Mr Nigel Jon Sing

Miss Lim Hui Chi

National Junior College

How might the use of Choice Boards affect Learner Autonomy?

Choice Boards provide students with the opportunity to have autonomy over their learning. Discover how this way of differentiating learning was carried out in an upper primary art classroom.

Independent Discovery Through Collaborative Learning

This study explores strategies from Inquiry Based Learning and Knowledge Building to stimulate Secondary 3 Normal (Technical) students’ inquiry, experiments, reflection and learning with images, ideas, methods and artists’ works.

Meaningful Assessment Practices to Support Learning

Join us to find out how formative assessment may be conducted to support self-regulated learning, check for understanding, and provide meaningful feedback.

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Mrs Rachel Tay Rivervale Primary School

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Ms Catherine Rajindran

Mr Huang Yaonan Davis

Teck Whye Secondary School

Dr Koh Bee Kim Arts Education Branch

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Ms Loh Lai Kuen

St Joseph’s Institution

Ms Teh Ting Ting

CHIJ Secondary (Toa Payoh)

Ms Chiu Yun Ting

St. Anthony’s Canossian

Secondary School

Mr Heng Swee Kiang

Victoria School

Mdm Ira Wati Sukaimi

Mayflower Secondary School

Microsites for Blended Learning Experiences

Would you like to learn how Microsites can enhance face-to-face and online learning? We will discuss the benefits of Microsites and show how easy it can be to create one.

Watch here

Mdm Nur Ilyana Binte

Mohamed Anwar

Mrs Sharon Lai

Mdm Nur Safikha Abdul Ghapar

CHIJ Our Lady of the Nativity

MTPSmtp—A Comprehensive and Holistic Model for Art Curricula and Pedagogical Development

MTPSmtp stands for Materials, Techniques, Processes, Subject matter, message, theme and presentation. Explore with us this dynamic model for activating creative and meaningful teaching, learning, practice and appreciation of Art.

Nurturing

Independent Learners: SOLO Taxonomy as a Strategy for Self-regulated Learning.

Strengthening formative assessment practices makes learning process smoother and the products even more rewarding. Learn how SOLO-taxonomy helps anxious learners become more self-directed through instruction, rubrics and feedback.

Nurturing

Students’

Creative Voices

Through Choice-Based Learning in Art Education

This study examines how Choice-Based Learning promotes and shapes students’ creative voices in solving problems and generating innovative solutions, and observes how students’ choices affect their artistic process and resulting artworks.

Positive

Education through Art Engagement for Pupils with “At-Risk” Behaviours

This research study examines the power of Art in promoting self-regulation and how Art engagement affects the young people’s perceptions of their current and future selves.

Reframing Diversity

This Talk Shop focuses on strategies and considerations in designing remote art learning experiences that are differentiated and invitational to meet the needs of diverse students.

Ms Lee Mun Yee

Mr Heng Swee Kiang

Ms Mabel Sim Jia Hui

Victoria School

Mdm Ira Wati Sukaimi

Ms Nurulhuda Mustafa Mayflower Secondary School

Mr Ang Kok Yeow

Zhenghua Primary School

Ms Nuraini Bte Abdul

Samat

St. Stephen’s School

Mdm Keh Hwee Peng

Irisse

Mr Joo Chan Hock

Ms Kanade Pooja

Hua Yi Secondary School

Art and Interdisciplinary Talk Shops

Remaking Our Art Gallery Space

How can we redesign existing learning spaces in our art gallery in order to enhance learning experiences of our learners as well as provide opportunities for physical and virtual showcase?

Spark

the Joy of Learning with Differentiated Instructions

Discover how differentiated instructions (DI) may be implemented in the Primary Art classroom as we share how readiness level may be determined, what and how to tier art making activities.

Sparking Secondary Students Interest in Digital Illustrations

How might teachers help students develop their personal illustration styles? This presentation shares lesson ideas, ways to spark students’ interests and tools used to teach digital illustration.

Think Like a Designer

Students’ metacognitive skills are honed by assuming the role of graphic designers and experiencing a design development process. The highlight is a ‘platform agnostic’ project, made possible by technological affordances.

Through Our Lens

This module serves to empower pupils with basic photography skills and provide a platform for them to explore the medium creatively, pursue personal interest, and engage in decision making and self-directed learning.

Ms Yong Sok Cheng

Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School (Primary)

Mrs Angela Sim-Lee Xing Yu

Mdm Karmilah Khamis

Mdm Maimona Mohamed Innova Primary School

Ms Goh Yu Jie East Spring Secondary School

Ms Sophia Natasha Wei Junhao

Mr Alan Huang Han Hui Methodist Girls’ School

Ms Oh Ji Ji

Ms Tang Hui Jing Catholic High School (Primary)

Interdisciplinary

Arts Alive! From Imagination to Real Life—Creating an Infusion of Art and Music, a Virtual Museum Experience Coming Alive! Arts Alive!

Ever wondered how the Arts could come Alive? From Imagination to Real Life: Junyuan Primary Aesthetics Department will feature a module on infusing Art and Music, broadening students’ artistic expressions.

Watch here

Mr Murugesu

Samarasan

Mr Wang Shing Huei

Mrs Michelle Chan Yen

Ling

Mdm Sarah Wong Sze

Yuen

Junyuan Primary School

Citizenry through the Arts: Making Connections to Contemporary Issues and Advocating for Positive Change

This presentation shares the school’s journey to help students make sense of contemporary issues and how they can respond positively through the arts with the ‘Artizenry’ Programme.

ICAR2E ARTS Stories!

Stories are inspirational. ‘ICAR2E Begins with Me’, a special collection of stories written by art teachers, teaches values through the arts before embarking on the processes of art and music making.

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Mr Fong Yan Kin

Palm View Primary School

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Ms Tan Hern Ngee Cindy

Ms Felicia Ong Tze Yu

Sengkang Green Primary School

Making Aesthetics Education Deep and Powerful—Overall Ideas and a Case Study Using Dance Education

DBAE and UbD provide structures to analyse and make meaning through the arts, focusing on discussing and appreciating dance via elements of dance and its historical and cultural roots. (DBAE = Discipline-Based Art Education, UbD = Understanding by Design)

Watch here

Mr Mohamed Fadzeel

Abdul Rahman

Mdm Nuruljannah

Mukasim

Admiralty Primary School

Art and Interdisciplinary Talk Shops

Mood Creation through the Arts— A Creative Arts Making Experience

Dazhong students explored how sounds from musical instruments described moods stimulated by pictures and words. Students used the various moods to draw pictures with colours depicting the moods they experienced.

Seeing & Listening: A Fusion of Art and Music Education

Learn how students at a SPED secondary school experienced art and music learning in a novel way. Each lesson in the 10-week unit involved creating art inspired by music.

The Experimental Possibilities of Adding Sound Effects to Comics

This interdisciplinary lesson allows students to interweave what they have learnt, Proportion and Perspectives drawing techniques and Musique concrete, into self-expressive artwork. Students are to compose soundscape for their comic.

Mdm Chan Wee Teng

Dawn

Ms Chang Mei Shan Dazhong Primary School

Ms Karen Zainal

Ms Rena Ng Hui Fang

APSN Tanglin School

Mr John Foo

Ms Eudora Tan

Pei Hwa Secondary School

Pop-Up 10 Presentations

Missed out on eAEC? Not to worry—check out these Pop-Up 10 presentations, which were conducted live on Zoom during the conference and recorded for your viewing pleasure. Pick up strategies to creatively engage learners and watch the discussion unfold through live polls and Q&A , all in 10—15 minutes!

View the showcase for Art and Interdisciplinary Pop-Up 10 presentations

↘ Watch them here

Art Teachers as Bloggers

Imagine having access to any Art teachers’ classroom with a click of the mouse. In this session, you will hear the presenter’s musings through years of blogging about her classroom teaching.

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Ms Hazel Huang Changkat Primary School

Elevating Student Voice in the Art Classroom

What might an art classroom that encourage students voice sound like and look like? Let’s discuss ways to facilitate greater student engagement and ownership by providing opportunities for more student voice?

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Ms Rafeeza Khaliq

St Margaret’s Primary School

Grab Them or Lose Them: The 3 Ps of Engaging Learners of Today with Videos

Have you ever wondered how to bait students to get them interested in what you’ll be teaching? Find out what are the 3 Ps of video making to engage learners of today.

Ms Nurul I’zzah Binte Basiron De La Salle School

sTo ies Alive!

Learn what Evergreen Sec blended learning curriculum is all about in this Pop-Up 10 presentation. Join us if you have questions to ask and / or ideas to share about blended learning.

Ms Jasmine Ngo Evergreen Secondary School

Using Cultural Lived Experiences in the Art Classroom

As teachers, our cultural lived experiences can be rich starting points for us to inspire students to appreciate each other’s lived experiences of culture through genuine and meaningful interactions.

Capitalising on E-pedagogy in the Arts to Build Students as Generalists in a VUCA World

How might e-pedagogy support meaning making in art and cross-disciplinary connections through art? Can art education prepare students to be generalist and thrive in a VUCA world? Let’s discuss.

Ms Aini Azidah Jurong Pioneer Junior College

Ms Iris Chia Hoon Nee Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road)

Implementing Differentiated Instruction in the Art Classroom: The Deyi Experience

Learn about how Deyi art teachers applied differentiated instruction for students with varied interests, levels of readiness and learning profiles.

Ms Michelle Chu Deyi Secondary School

P4 Museum Based Learning Virtual Learning Space

Have you ever tried making use of Deck Toys to create a virtual Museum Based Learning Space for your students? Come and explore the possibility of building this platform together!

Purposeful Printmaking with RealWorld Application

This sharing is about an art lesson idea in which primary school students make connections between printmaking activities in class and patterns on textiles which are used in the realworld.

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Ms Jasmine Ng

Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School (Primary)

Watch here

Mr Abdul Malik Bin Mazlan

Fuhua Primary School

Interdisciplinary

Innovating to Impact Our Learners

Were you challenged to create alternative ways to continue the art or music making process and showcase your students’ works in this current situation? Let’s come and learn from one another.

Music from the Inside-Out

This multi-disciplinary heritage project that leverages on knowledge building, aims to cultivate a greater sense of community consciousness and empathy through song composition where students express others’ and their own experiences.

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Mrs Charmaine Tan

Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School (Primary)

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Mr Anthony Chua

Teck Whye Secondary School

Arts Energisers

If you are in need of a mood booster, try your hand at these Art Energisers! These fun bite-sized activites may be adapted for your own classrooms.

Imagine That!

Imagine That! is an imaginative drawing exercise you can play in 5 minutes! Follow the instructions to create an imaginary creature from random shapes. After that, use STAR’s Tell-A-Story choice board to craft a storyline for it.

Find out more

↘ Watch the video here

↘ View the online resources

Sculpture Dash!

Sculpture Dash! is a virtual art trail with a twist! In the time given, guess the title and artist of the sculpture using the visual clues provided. Learn more about these public artworks as we dash (virtually) from Tanglin Road to Gardens by The Bay (and a bonus location at the end)!

Find out more

↘ Watch the video here

Curiosity Box

Missed your chance to download the Curiosity Box from our e-AEC website? Have a second chance at downloading them here!

The six delightful items in this box of curiosities will surely speak to the creative spirit in you! Enjoy such things as a throwback to 1950s Singapore visual culture, or a glimpse of a traditional Japanese reinterpretation of Star Wars! Have we mentioned we have stickers too?

a x edge 2021 will be on view at the SOTA gallery between 13—21 March. This exhibition is brought to you by our team of art teachers:

Guest Curator

Michael Lee

Michael Lee is an artist based in Singapore. He researches urban memory and fiction, especially the contexts and implications of loss. He transforms his observations into diagrams, models, environments, events or texts. Among his curatorial projects is “What it is about when it is about nothing” (2015) held in Mizuma Gallery, Singapore. He is currently observing the mood of Singapore’s art scene.

The a x edge 2021 exhibition borrows the symbol ‘x’ that coincides with the Roman numeral 10 for our 10th iteration of this exhibition series. The curatorial team invites submission of artworks that respond to one or more of the following three themes associated with the symbol ‘x’:

DESIRE DECISIONS

DELETION

X marks the spot we are journeying towards Where do we want to go from here?

X marks our favoured option How do we make choices?

X cancels out some views Who is excluded due to inequalities?

Teacher-curators

Maisarah Kamal

Art Teacher

Boon Lay Garden Primary

Maisarah Kamal is an artist based in Singapore. She uses her works to expound on existential ideas. Maisarah is a recipient of the Goh Chok Tong Youth Promise Award and she has exhibited her works in National Museum, Ion Art Gallery, The Substation as well as ilights, Marina Bay Sands. She exhibited and curated a show “Of Spaces & Phases” for Singapore Artweek in 2020

Victor Gan

Subject Head (Int)

Nan Hua High School

Victor Gan is a storyteller telling personal stories through choice—film. When not in enjoys all aspects of film-making. graduation, Victor has continued year and is fortunate to have several film festivals around

Teacher-programmers

Jane Chua is an alumnus of the NTU / NIE Teaching Scholars Programme and believes in the transformative power of education. To Jane, forming strong teacher-student bonds, deepening her pedagogical practices, and sharing her belief in the importance of Art education, are of paramount importance. Outside of teaching, her gifting is most often shared with the organisations she serves in.

Teacher-designers

Assistant Year Head St. Hilda’s Primary

storyteller at heart. He believes in through his medium of in school teaching, he film-making. Since continued to make a film a have his film played at around the world.

Jasjit Kaur graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Communication. She worked as a graphic designer before embarking on a career as an Art educator. Her experience as a graphic designer continues to shape her approach as an Art educator. She believes in making Art a positive experience for every student regardless of their artistic ability.

Matthew Lim makes work that explores psychology, technology and systems through both physical and / or digital media. By investigating the interstices between preconceived categories and the intersections of opposites, his work usually takes form across discipline and media boundaries. His work has been shown in both local and international exhibitions.

Teacher Aesthetics (Y1-4)

Raffles Institution

Tay Li-Cheng is an early adopter of any technology with creative potential and loves to tinker. He works across mediums, on a quest to reacquaint digital native students with their hearts and hands. Li-Cheng is a filmmaker by training, graphic designer by practice, and educator by vocation.

Chua Zheng Yi Jane

Jasjit Kaur

Matthew Lim

Tay Li-Cheng

Art Teacher Kheng Cheng School

Art Teacher Hwa Chong Institution (College)

Ang Hwee Loo

Deputy Director (Art)

↘ Ang_Hwee_Loo@moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1493

Seow Ai Wee

Master Teacher (Art)

↘ Seow_Ai_Wee@moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1556

Lim Kok Boon

Master Teacher (Art)

↘ Lim_Kok_Boon@moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1502

Victoria Loy Master Teacher (Art)

↘ Victoria_Loy@moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1551

Chun Wee San Master Teacher (Art)

↘ Chun_Wee_San@moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1547

Heryanty Mohd Yahaya Senior Academy Officer

↘ Heryanty_Mohamed_Yahaya@ moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1546

Chia Ying Academy Officer

↘ Chia_Ying@moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1545

Chen Xiangling Jess Academy Officer

↘ Chen_Xiangling@moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1550

Lorraine Lee Academy Officer

↘ Lorraine_Lee@moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1552

Editor

Co-Editor Illustration and Graphic Design

Lorraine Lee Academy Officer, STAR

Chow Huiru Studio Assistant, STAR

Kim Nguyen

Tan Bee Ngoh

Senior Administrative Executive For general enquiries, please contact:

↘ Tan_Bee_Ngoh@moe.gov.sg

↘ 6664 1549

Tel: +65 6664 1561 Fax: +65 6273 9048