Patience Pays Off

Students are learning by day three that archaeology is not always about unearthing ancient treasures and not quite as glamorous as it's portrayed in the cinema. Excavation requires a lot of patience and hard work between finds. From trowelling in the trench, to sieving the soil, and more pot-washing of artefacts, the students carried on working in teams. They also learned about using the level, in order to measure the depth of the site. In the afternoon, they will begin participating in "finds" photography and will also learn about stratigraphy, or how archaeological sites are formed. Students are looking forward to digging down to the next context level and to identifying artefacts from their last two days at the site.

Kentish Town School: Getting Their Hands Dirty

Day two of the excavation at Kentish Town School found the students busy digging in the subsoil, sieving the soil, and washing their finds. Their teamwork, energy, and enthusiasm for the project was infectious--perhaps the sunshine and biscuits helped! The plot thickened as teams found more bone fragments to be identified, along with coins, glass, brick, pottery shards, and seashells. Teams learned to use a level, trowel, and other tools of the trade, and had a go at labelling and drawing artefacts. In addition, students demonstrated confidence in identifying interesting finds (for example: flints and brick) and deciding which objects could go be thrown back into the pit.

Nice weather for digging

Just on my way in for the second day of digging and the weather forecast looks better than yesterday. We only had a little rain in the morning, but it's amazing how much mud it makes and mud gets everywhere.

We're getting down to the subsoil which is lighter in colour and quite hard. As yet, no masonry but we have had some small pieces of red brick, slate and window glass. A rib bone of an as yet unidentified animal also came up from the topsoil and we'll try to identify that today.

Setting up the excavation

We're almost done with the set-up of the excavation in Kentish Town School, which will start on Monday. The topsoil (and underlying rubber matting) is off, the tools are there and all the activities are planned.

We've had to move a compost bin that was attracting wasps and will find something to ward off the cats or foxes that may come in and leave a present in the trench overnight.

Tomorrow we'll be putting up a fence and surveying in the temporary benchmark. Look out for some photos of our finds!

Mood boards

One of the great outcomes from the Buildings and Patterns project was using mood boards with reception class to gather inspiration from around the British Museum.

The children used mood boards to collect colours and shapes they saw in the Great Court and Africa Gallery.

The mood boards were just pieces of A3 paper and the children drew colours with chalk and crayon and cut out pieces of coloured sticky paper and stuck those on as well.

The children had already learned on their earlier visit to pick out patterns from objects, rather than just draw the objects themselves. The colours and shapes they collected from the Great Court and the Africa Gallery were very different.

The children then used the mood boards to create woven pieces of art, but they could be used to create all sorts of artwork. See one of the mood boards and the finished woven pieces below.

Grand Opening of Georgian flowerbeds at Russell Square

Yesterday was the Grand Opening of Georgian flowerbeds researched, designed and planted by Year 5 and 6 of St George the Martyr School. The Mayor of Camden, Councillor Faruque Ansari, opened the garden and talked about the great achievements the children had made.

Despite the weather everyone enjoyed themselves, especially after ice-cream and juice from the cafe!

Google SketchUp

One of the great pieces of software that the Central St Martins students on the Buildings and People project used has been Google SketchUp, which is freely downloadable.

You can use it to design buildings and create animations through your design. I had a practice with it this morning before using it at Parliament Hill School. These are just cubes decorated with images and textures. Look out for the pupil's work, which will feature their own images.

Buildings and Patterns 2nd Celebration Event

The teacher of reception class at St George the Martyr wanted to give her pupils a chance to show the whole school, their parents and the teachers all the fabulous work they had done when they went into the British Museum and worked with Katharine Hoare.

So this morning we had a full school assembly and went through a PowerPoint of images of the children collecting inspiration from the galleries in different ways, drawing, creating mood boards and taking digital photographs, and then using their inspiration to create wonderul artworks - prints, woven pieces and dance. Look at this woven piece, it's not quiet finished.

Forensic Architecture # 2

Students from Central St Martins ran the Forensic Architecture workshop again at the Hunterian Museum on 1st July. 22 gifted and talented pupils from Haverstock School came down to design and model a sculpture inspired by the collections and architecture in one day.

Once again, the creative response was brilliant, and the pupils also wrestled with the tricky engineering problem of getting a model to stand up. Pictures to follow.