Harvest // Lesson Plan

Artwork Title: Harvest

Name of Artist: Belize Chan, Nurjannah Ayub and Pang Chiaw Yong

School: Innova Primary School, MacPherson Primary School, Damai Secondary School

Possible Guiding Questions for Discussing Art

Possible lesson ideas for making art

Exploration of Art Making Materials:

· What might harvesting mean to urban dwellers? (to you?)

· What made the artists decide on these specific materials to use for their artwork?

· How might the choice of materials change the meaning of their artwork?

· “If you had to decide on the materials to use in order to create a similar artwork, what would you choose? Why?

Exploration of art making spaces/ environments

· How did the artist make use of the physical space and environment for their art?

· How might the choice of space change the meaning/processes of their artwork?

· If you had to choose a space to situate or re-create this artwork, what would you do differently and what would be the reasons for your choice?

1. The teacher could begin by eliciting responses about the environments in which students go about their daily lives.
Lead student in a mental exercise that retraces their footsteps
to the (recurrent) places they have come across in the past days, weeks, or month.
Prompt students to talk about familiar places such as the school compound, bus stop outside school, MRT stations, retail establishments, the favourite snack shop, HDB void decks, public parks, spaces in their homes, etc.

Make thinking visible:

Draw an infographic/map. This is a visualization of the spaces each student interacts with, in his or her daily life. Spaces of significance can be highlighted with written annotations or symbols.
Example: H-1

This diagram could possibly serve as a starting point in the student’s planning for his/her site specific artwork that is strongly dependant on the materials that the student artist chooses within their spaces of significance. It can be helpful to revisit and revise this diagram s the artwork develops further.

2. Next, the teacher could show imagery that depict traditional harvests, i.e. Agricultural harvests, or industrial harvests (which is prevalent today, even in an agricultural context); harvests that speak about the abundance of materials and what our land provides to us humans. Examine how some communities use the excess products of the Earth’s wealth of materials to perform rituals.

· Are there similarities and/or differences between the harvesting processes?

· What are some of the rituals surrounding harvests among the diverse types of communities?

· How do different communities make use of their harvests?

· What are our rituals surrounding harvests?

· Why do the different communities respond differently to their “harvests”?

3. What does our land provide us with? What can we harvest from our land? Do we celebrate our harvests? How? Are there parallels in our urban landscape? What are some materials that are readily available in abundance in the built-up environment we live in?

4. Thinking about the materials in abundance in the student artist’s immediate landscape, the student could make a harvesting plan. This plan could consist of a time schedule, a list of possible items available, logistics requires to transport items, safety, etc.
This activity could be limited within the school compound or be extended into more personal or public spaces such as the student’s home and his/her neighbourhood. The student could then follow this plan to collect art making materials.

5. Drawing inspiration from rituals of local traditions, world cultures or even mundane daily rituals, student artists could respond to their harvested materials to create their own HARVEST.