Professional Development
My work as an artist nationally has mainly focused on commissioned site specific public artwork in Brick and other materials. Often a commission has required extensive community consultation exercises which are based in schools and other community groups. This process is essentially concerned with facilitating workshops which allow people and children to explore their creative imagination and produce ideas for projects. This process is very valuable and sometimes is more significant for the participant than the finished product. I then used this approach working for Creative Partnerships.com as an artist in residence in schools where through facilitating workshops which develop creativity many if not all aspects of the curriculum can be enhanced and explored in a new way. Developing staff as well as working with children is critical to the overall development of creative thinking and led me to working with Pallabs.org. For Performing Arts Laboratories Ltd I designed and delivered a programme of performative sculptural activities designed for people from different education sectors such as food technology, science, and for teachers and artists who work with volatile and challenging young people. Quote from a Pal Lab Evaluation written by Dr Anne Douglas October 2005 "Rod Harris’s methodology is informed by his practice as a sculptor working directly with materials. Within his sessions he created a space of interaction framed by a sculptural ‘task’ – the building of a clay tower to the height of the shortest person in the group; the building of a large-scale land drawing of a particular aspect of Bore Place (the venue) using found materials; constructing individual fruit puppets as intimate self-portraits that were enacted in the puppet theatre to an audience made up of fellow group members. Rod took a decisive but non-authoritarian role as leader or facilitator by setting up the creative space and related task and by overseeing a process by which individuals needed to work with others to achieve a result. They needed to give spaceto others to come forward and offer suggestions, skills, to make mistakes and move on. Rod realised a high level of aesthetic experience both in the formal sense – quality of materials, colour and texture, but also in a transformative sense of something becoming something else in ways that were completely unimaginable at the outset. Rod enabled individuals to make new things that appeared from the outset to be impossible to achieve by developing both self-reliance and collaboration.”
A Rubber Band Sculpture commissioned by Liverpool University, Sculptor in Residence, Liverpool Capital Of Culture 08 project. The sculpture was unveiled on Big Bang day.
These images are a selection from a professional development day designed for a group of teaching professionals from Filton Nursery School in Bristol. The intention is to aid group development, explore individual and group creativity and to explore the natural qualities of the material
Belvue School, London, Inset Day.
Make an Elephant behind your back.
Based upon the quote by Terry Frost "If you know before you look, you can't see for knowing".
Making a clay elephant behind your back without looking forces people to use their sense of touch and visual memory to create an object.
A group of Elephants
The results of the Elephant behind your back task.
Throwing clay.
This activity provides a release for participants and explores the natural qualities of the material.Standing in a large circle each member of the group aims to throw their clay lump high into the centre of the circle simultaneously.
There are videos for download here
Group Tower
The group are separated into teams of four or five people and asked to collaborate in the creation of the highest clay tower possible with all their combined clay lumps.
The Longest Line
Remaining in their teams they are asked to create the longest clay line possible with all their clay.
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