The Student Perspective
Jul 4th, 2008 by admin
By Samson Dada, Y9
"Last week a group of four other Y9 students and I were selected to participate in the 'Small Steps to Sustainable Living' Community Arts Project held at the Zion Arts Centre.
The aim was to design posters that would be displayed on the insides of buses. This would be in the hope that it would persuade people to limit the amount of non renewable energy sources used and use renewable sources of energy.
We were given a warm welcome by the people in charge, who then kicked off proceedings with a brief talk on CO2 emissions.
Thirty minutes later everyone had come up with real positive, individual and encouraging poster ideas. After a discussion we were raring to go and spread out all different shades and colours of wax crayons, paints and paint brushes. We were determined to make a poster we would be proud of and would be better than all of the other groups. But they probably thought the same thing. Well I suppose competitiveness never did any harm, did it?
With our deadline fast approaching the pressure began to mount as the whole group upped the speed on their paint brushes and wax crayons to cross the finish line. As expected we pasted this with flying colours, and at the end we had an outstanding poster set to appear on buses throughout the city of Manchester. It had our motto "Walk this way", beautifully written by Guy, surrounding the greenery, sun and bikes which were meant to represent a alternative means of transportation as opposed to driving a car to work.
I was very fortunate to work with several very good artists, especially Guy McKinley who, as a professional freelance artist "wowed" us with his amazing free hand sketches and stunning graphic work.
I got a great deal from the afternoon; Team work, communication skills and learning that on the day everyone's personal ideas opinions and views were equally valid.
My key highlights of the day were probably meeting and working with Guy McKinley and getting a drawn, signed portrait of him. I was also interviewed and won the quiz.
I was selected for the trip, but enough though it centred on Art; it was not for my Art skills. I am literally a shambolic drawer! No fishing for compliments. I am!
But most of my entire highlight was eating the mouth watering, delicious vegetarian buffet. I wouldn't mind going to the Zion Arts Centre everyday for lunch, although a certain somebody would have something to say about that!
(Editor; who on earth can he mean?)
This report was written by me in Year 9. Some parts of the text have been edited, as my writing has improved since then.
To check the validity of the author, log on to: http://old.trinityhigh.com/inform/news/newsletters_05_06/news_07_apr_06.pdf (See Page 2).