A Flag Day At Hillcross (Flying the Flag for Haydon 2011)

Thursday morning and I'm stuck in some bizarre traffic jam just outside Morden in what seems to have been caused by a blend of malfunctioning traffic lights and gas main repairs. Usually I wouldn't really mind too much but I'm supposed to be at Hillcross School at 9am to help out with a flag-painting workshop and as I can see the left turn only about 20 yards away - but have no chance of taking it - it's all getting a little frustrating...

So I'm about 25 minutes later than planned when I finally arrive in one of the classrooms at Hillcross and I can see that all the tables are covered in newspaper and that there's no one there - it's like the Marie Celeste!  However, I'm soon joined by Miss Lowe the class teacher who not only lets me off being late but who is eager to show me the hard work that the two Year 3 classes have been putting in over the last few days. With her own experiences and stories as a Plough Lane steward to help stir their imaginations the children have each been  designing their own idea of what the flag might look like. As you can see in the slide-show below their ideas ranged over a large number of possible ideas and images

Miss Lowe and I went through them all and tried to pull together elements from a couple of flags into one that would represent the school. In the end we used ideas from three different flags even though many of them would make great flags just on their own!

The basic layout folded to make some rough guidelines

By now the children were coming in for a story so we had to creep out to our new art studio in the Science Lab and decide on the format for the day. We eventually decided that I and a classroom assistant would work with one group of seven or eight children at a time for about 45 minutes or so. These would then be replaced by another group who would take up the brushes and carry on. Of course this meant that the first group had all the problems of sketching out the outlines, working on scaling things up and only getting to paint the most basic of background information (and  - by popular demand - an orange aircraft!) but they set to work with a great deal of excitement and soon had a good flag outline in place. We liked the flying banner from one flag, the characters from a second and the the recycling message and imagery from a third, which everyone seemed pretty happy with

You can see the banner and the orange jet pulling it now....

As the day went by more and more groups came in and the hair-dryer was kept very busy indeed trying to finish off some pretty soggy surfaces. It was quite hectic at times, trying to keep seven children all busy at dealing with different areas of the flag and while I was very keen to tell them not to worry too much if they went over the line, that didn't mean that they should ignore it completely....!!!

We only had the one mishap during the day - a pot of brown paint ended up on the flag, amongst other places - but I doubt anyone will notice now it's been painted over it with white (fingers crossed!)

By the end of the day the children had completed about two thirds of their flag. They have some details to sort out and a large area of grass to fill in so I'll be back next week to finish it off but it's all looking very promising and has been a real achievement for such a young group of artists.

Dundonald & Abbotsbury schools (Flying the Flag for Haydon - 2011)

The second week of school visits kicked off with a trip to Dundonald Primary School, just behind Wimbledon High Street. I was there with a fair bit of time to spare and as the assembly hall was being used for a public meeting I had enough time to stroll into town to look for a couple of extra 'flags'. It seemed a good idea to stock up as the school were considering doing one flag for each of the years. Seven in total!

Well ambition is a great thing but painting a large scale flag is quite an undertaking. Painting seven would test the patience of a saint but I was hopeful that restricting their effort to just a couple of flags might just be 'do-able'. Luckily Elys had just opened so after explaining my exacting requirements I was able to pick up a couple for a reasonable amount. Back to Dundonald then and the public meeting was just coming to an end. There was a knock-on effect which meant the first of the assemblies for the younger children was going to be a little shorter than usual. Again I was ably assisted by a couple of very capable IT related older children who kindly installed and ran my powerpoint for me so that helped a great deal but they were also very handy as 'flag-extras', putting up and arranging a number of flags around the hall and providing a suitable setting for the show to come.

I was introduced to the assembly by Miss Nugent, the school's art co-ordinator and after having the reason for my visit explained (there were lots of curious stares at the walls) we started looking at all things Wimbledon.

The younger children were really interested in the wombles and, as before, it was the flags produced by the schools last year that really caught their imagination. There were some interesting questions as well, but before long the older children were outside waiting for their assembly. This was a larger group and it was quite strange to be going over the same slides, questions and flags so quickly, but again, as with all the children in all the schools, everyone was very well behaved, polite and very keen to get involved with creating their own flag. 

When all the children had left for their break I had a brief but enjoyable chat with the Headteacher and Miss Nugent and I'm hopeful that we may be treated to two flags from Dundonald, one from each assembly!

Last years flag from Abbotsbury. Slightly drier weather as well.

Tuesday saw the welcome return to Abbotsbury Primary School, one of last years participating schools. This was an extra pleasure as the team that produced the flag were able to come up on stage to show it to the rest of the school and this was another venue where I was able to put up the rest of the Tempest End flags around the walls. It was also handy having the youngsters up on stage as well as they made very competent 'flag-danglers' for the rest of the school flags. Luckily their arms were young and strong! 

Abbotsbury know all about the production of quality flags so I'm very confident that they'll be producing another cracker this year.

Two young fans are surprised by an unexpected AFC Wimbledon shirt in the middle of their class

 Whilst I was at Abbotsbury I was very pleased to pop in to see a couple of very special young youngsters. Their teacher, Miss Holme, had mentioned that there were two very committed AFC Wimbledon supporters in her Year One class and that they would be very excited if I could pop my head around the classroom door to say hello before I left. I think it would be the sight of an AFC Wimbledon shirt that was more interesting, rather than myself, so rather than have them disappointed I managed to rustle up a couple of recent programmes, bags and a Junior Dons cap or two. They were suitably surprised at my unexpected arrival and after coming up for a quick chat were slightly surprised to be presented with a Wimbledon goody-bag!  It was a pleasure to meet them both and I hope they have the chance to wear their caps to a match soon!

This was the end of the school assembly visits. I had, however, offered any support I could to those producing the flags and there was only a couple of days grace before I had been invited back to Hillcross Primary to lead a painting workshop. That was going to be new territory for me!

A little bit of after school reading!

"Flying the Flag for Haydon - 2011 ...the adventure has begun!"

Although everything seems to have been a little quiet on the community front over the last couple of months ('quiet' if you based your assumptions of activity on how often I update this blog at any rate..) the reality is that it's really been a little like a swan gliding across a lake. Serene on top but with frantic paddling going on underneath.

A stack of flags and Orinoco Womble at Hillcross

l

The frantic paddling has, for the most part, consisted of both devising a range of community activities for the coming year and - having finally come up with a set of activities which seem to be both worthwhile and achievable - then put in applications to a number of grant-providers to actually help fund them.  I suspect money will be tight enough as it is this year so making the most of available  funding opportunities will be crucial over the next year or two.

There have been some successes with the applications and some disappointments and there are still a few decisions outstanding, but that couldn't stand in the way of the first of those projects, the exciting return of AFC Wimbledon's exercise in art on the vast scale, "Flying the Flag for Haydon!"

This actually kicked off in March of this year with an invitation being sent out to all the primary schools in Merton reminding them of last years project and inviting them to participate in this years. We had about six positive responses but as is the case with these sort of activities, a couple of initial responders dropped out due to time pressure or other demands on the staff. Not that this should be seen as too much of a disappointment - both the schools that dropped out are still interested in taking part next year and it could be that the way we have organised the project could be improved to make it easier to accommodate within the school year (live and learn!). Anyway, the four schools that still wanted to take part were Hillcross, Hatfeild, Abbotsbury and Dundonald and between them they are looking at producing six flags - the same as we were able to show last year. The schools are all Merton primary schools, but this is down more to my previous job with Merton Council than anything else. If you have any contacts within Kingston or Wandsworth schools then please let me know and I'll drop them an invite!


Flag Shows
So, the real starting point of the project is the visit to the school for a flag show, and an invitation to the children to take up the challenge of producing a flag to represent their school. I hope that the project provides a valuable contribution to the Keystage 2 Art & Design curriculum and if you consider what is entailed in the production of a school flag - the designing, collaboration, scaling up, use of powerpoint and projection for lettering, the considerations of visibility and clarity..... all of these seem to tie in well with the sumary of the national curriculum summary as detailed below

5. During the key stage, pupils should be taught the Knowledge, skills and understanding through:

1. exploring a range of starting points for practical work [for example, themselves, their experiences, images, stories, drama, music, natural and made objects and environments]
2. working on their own, and collaborating with others, on projects in two and three dimensions and on different scales
3. using a range of materials and processes, including ICT [for example, painting, collage, print making, digital media, textiles, sculpture]
4. investigating art, craft and design in the locality and in a variety of genres, styles and traditions [for example, in original and reproduction form, during visits to museums, galleries and sites, on the internet].

Well if displaying your flag at a football ground isn't an interesting variation on point 4 I don't know what would be!

Hatfeild Primary School
The first visit was to Hatfeild Primary on Lower Morden Lane. A very friendly school with some really on the ball pupils as can be seen from the following exchange. Me: "Does anyone have any questions?" Bright spark in the front row: "Yes. Did you make it up to Manchester the other week for the final? Because I did....." Me (thinks) "This is going to be an enjoyable morning..."

Because I pretty much went straight in to the assembly there was no chance to hang the flags up but because it was just the two classes in the hall  we had plenty of space to lay a lot of flags on the floor for the children to walk around, which worked pretty well I thought. Another development was the use of a small powerpoint slide show to help explain what wombles are and what the project was about. Very useful and I was able to use it in three out of the four schools




The key though is to show the children the flags produced by the children the previous year. That really caught their interest and fired their imagination, especially if they knew some of the schools that participated! 

So that was the first flag display and very enjoyable it was too. Then as I was packing up I had a chat with one of the members of staff who confided that her father used to be a steward at Plough Lane and that he had also been to a couple of AFC Wimbledon games as well,  which was a really nice touch but not, as it turned out, all that unusual. As you'll see it seems that every school has a Wimbledon connection!


Hillcross Primary School

  That was the Tuesday.  Wednesday saw me at Hillcross Primary school, strolling up the drive as classes were already filing into the hall! Not much time for elaborate preparation then and after being spotted by Mrs Jertzee and having a few quick words, I was straight into the assembly. Some IT savy pupils took full control of my memory-stick, set up the powerpoint and did a very competent job with the presentation as well. As it happened the teacher leading the assembly went through an art project involving album covers of the 80's and as an introduction to the project was able to neatly segue into great events of 1988 and the Wimbledon FA Cup triumph before letting me loose on the pupils. Nicely done sir! When asked if they had any idea what I might be, some very kind youngsters suggested I might in fact be a football player or possibly a coach. I don't think a flag-painter was quite up there in the hierarchy of impressive roles, but certainly they seemed enthusiastic enough, as did the members of staff afterwards. Second coincidence - one of the teachers had once been a  steward at Plough Lane and she was well acquainted with the Sportsman's bar herself and through her time at the club she was also a friend of Chris Perry .. coincidental link number two!

As a result of this assembly I was also invited back to Hillcross to help out with a flag painting workshop the following week. I'm really looking forward to this as one thing that I enjoyed about the High Path project was the involvement with the participants and I'm wondering what sort of ideas the Hillcross youngsters are going to come up with for their design.

So that was the first week and there were still assemblies at Dundonald and Abbotsbury to come!