Week 5 - Freedom

I talked about this idea with my tutors and decided that this was a good idea but Claire told me to try and make it personal to me. I did this by thinking about what freedom meant to me and writing the ideas down. I like films and music and being able to express myself creatively. I started to look at songs and films about freedom, as this was something I was free to do and enjoy. I then picked the top 10 songs and films and started to do drawings related to this in media. For example I chose ‘I want to break Free’ by Queen and then drew Freddie Mercury from his character in the music video as he was an individual who expressed himself freely. A film I chose was ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’ starring Jack Nicholson and I drew the film cover which showed Jack staring at the sky, looking for freedom from the institute he had chosen to enter by choice (I found this sad but ironic).

I looked at different things and then also started to think which individuals represented a symbol or expression of freedom.

Week 4 - Freedom

One thing that was clear was that everyone had a different idea of what freedom meant to him or her so I decided to use that as my project. I would look at how the Magna Carta gave everyone rights so they had freedom and how this had developed in the modern day. After all this partly what the exhibition is about, celebrating freedom today. I thought perhaps a scrapbook would be a good way to show this and also I could then use the cards for pictures relating to the different quotes people had answered to my question.  I started to look at the quotes and began to find images to match them. This was actually quite harder than it sounds but I started to make good headway. I used watercolours, prismacolour pencils and pastels in some of the drawings. As I went on the idea came to me I could possibly use a photo album to show the work. I went into a charity shop with my mum and looked at albums and liked this idea more and more. I decided to talk about it with my tutors next week.

Week 3 - Freedom

I decided to ask the question to my family and friends as they are both male and female, different ages and different backgrounds. I decided I needed more information so as an option (reading about Cornelia Parker involving other people in her project helped this idea) I tweeted celebrities from Bruce Willis, Tony Blair and Carrie Hope Fletcher (a YouTuber) for an answer to my question.  I did not think much would happen but it was worth trying. I talked about it with my tutor Claire and she suggested that I ask students in the other groups so on Thursday and Friday I asked my class, Year 2 Fashion and Year 2 Art & Design what freedom meant to them and I got a lot of different answers, adding to the collection of quotes I had from family and friends. Originally I was going to base the project on the quotes solely from friends and family but the quotes from college students and teachers were very interesting and inspiring for my work. I then sorted them out over the weekend and tried to think how I could use them in my project.

Week 2 - Freedom

Back at college I looked at lots of information and kept getting confused as everybody had different ideas about the word freedom. I glanced at other students and realised that not one was the same as the other. Having control over our own project had brought out everyone's different ideas and different forms of expression and it was very interesting to be around.

 I asked my family and they all had different ideas about freedom.  My mum thinks education is a form of freedom, my dad being able to laugh and enjoy your life, my grandma just being happy.

I wrote down all the answers and thought about how to research my project. I spoke about it with my tutor and I decided to use primary researching by asking people the question  ‘What does the word Freedom mean to you?’ I would then write all the answers down and then plan how to use them in my project.

Week 1 - Freedom (actually 2 weeks but it was Easter Holidays).

On my last day of term just before the Easter Holidays my class was given information about our final project for year one. We were given a single word – Freedom. We were then given a plastic poly pocket with 63 pieces of a variety of card/paper. Our tutors then talked us through the project.

We were told about the Magna Carta and its 800^th anniversary celebrations in June and how our work was going on display alongside the Exhibition.

I found this intriguing and I also like the idea of been more in control of this project because I can interpret and express it how I want, in what style I want, using what media I want.

When we were given a plastic bag with a variety of different stationery ranging from wallpaper to card, all 10 x 10cm in size, I looked at the bag and could not work out what on earth I was going to do with them. Kat told us to treat them like a scrapbook but without the binder. I still was none the wiser, as I could not link the cards and word together at the same time.

  
Over the holidays I talked about the project and everybody from my family and friends all had a different idea about what freedom means. My mum told me about the Magna Carta and we looked at the websites, in particular the British Library webpage as this had a lot of detail about the celebrations including the artist Cornelia Parkers’ work to celebrate the anniversary.

My dad told me to disregard all the obvious ideas and think about what it meant to me.  It means lots of things to me so I typed in Google ‘what does freedom mean?’

It gave me lots of quotes about equality, empowerment, freedom and non-judgment and lots of pictures of people in fields, flying doves and breaking chains. I understood what my dad meant then, as I could not relate to any of that, for example I have never been chained or a slave.

I kept researching and making notes ready for when I went back to college but I still had no idea how to show what freedom means.