Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

30 minutes – Part A: What is Conscious Consumption?
30 minutes – Part B: The Art of Conscious Consumption
10 minutes – Part C: Planning a Conscious Consumption Artwork
60 minutes – Part D: Creating a Conscious Consumption Artwork
10 minutes – Reflection

Note: This teaching sequence could be delivered over a number of lessons.

Part A: What is Conscious Consumption?

Step 1. Explain to the class that during this lesson, they will be looking at an artist whose work advocates for a small changes we can make in our daily lives to that have a big environmental impact. They will examine their everyday routines and look for ways to reduce their environmental footprint then create an artwork that encourages others to do the same.

Step 2. Ask the class if they have heard the term 'conscious consumption'. Break this term into its two components and ask students to offer synonyms for the two words until they arrive at the ideas that conscious consumption is simply considering what you buy more carefully. This could mean thinking about things such as: what a product is made of, how often it is used before it is thrown away, if it comes in any packaging and if you actually need the product.

Step 3. Ask the class to think through their daily routines, and list any disposable items that they usually buy in their visual arts process diaries (VAPD). Reassure the class that they should not feel bad about their consumption and reinforce this idea by making a list of your own on the whiteboard, honestly revealing any single use disposable items that are a part of your daily routine.

Step 4. Invite students to add the following key to the bottom of their list:

Recyclable – R
Non-recyclable – N
Single use – S

Invite the class to review their lists and add a letter to each items. At this stage, encourage the class to use just their own knowledge. This means no asking friends or Googling just yet. This will allow students to gauge how much of their daily consumables they think belong in each category.

Step 5. Create a collaborative list of consumables with the class. Invite students to share examples from their list and what letters they allocated to each item. If other students also have this item on their list, allow them to share if they agree with how the item has been categorised.

Step 6. Once you have a class list, go to the Visy recycling webpage and double-check the items on your list. This step can be done as a teacher demonstration or students can use their devices to search for each item listed. If you have coffee cups/hot beverage cups on your list, skip over this item. You can explain to the class that you will expand on this item very soon.

Step 7. Raise the idea of single use hot beverage/coffee cups. If these items did not appear on your list, ask the class if this is something that others in their families purchase regularly. Ask the class to raise their hands if they think coffee cups are recyclable.

Step 8. Now, watch 'Takeaway coffee cups are not as recyclable as they seem and they're piling up in landfill' until 2 minutes and 10 seconds into the clip. Reiterate for the class that the paper exterior of a coffee cup is highly recyclable but, according to Planet Ark, the plastic lining can last around 50 years.

Part B: The Art of Conscious Consumption

Step 1. Explain to the class that they will be looking at the work of a contemporary artist, Gwyneth Leech. Much of Gwyneth’s work revolves around the up-cycling of disposable items to create art. The class will examine Gwyneth’s work to see how it inspires change, then plan an artwork, inspired by Gwyneth’s up-cycling technique.

Note: This art making can be completed in another class once they have collected some found objects from their everyday lives.

Step 2. Show students the clip below and invite them to answer the following questions on the Student Worksheet:

Faber-Castell: Gwyneth Leech (https://vimeo.com/161918763)

Coffee Cup Consumption

Why might Gwyneth’s walking to work be important to her practice?
What mediums does Gwyneth use?
Why do you think Gwyneth adds details to the bottoms of the cups?

Step 3. Invite students to form small groups and complete the following questions:

Coffee Cup Canvas

Does the use of coffee cups add to Gwyneth Leech’s artworks? If so, how?
Overall, do you think these artworks are drawings, sculptures, performance pieces, installations or something else entirely? Why?

Coffee Cup Concepts

Finally, considering your responses to the above questions, what messages do you believe the artist is trying to express in her coffee cup artworks? Suggested answers, conscious consumption, highlighting waste in everyday lives, encouraging up-cycling, making our consumption habits visible.

Step 4. Facilitate a class discussion where students are able to share their answers and discuss any differences in opinion.

Extension: Invite students to exploration of the artist’s practice by allowing students to look through Gwyneth Leech’s Instagram account. This account shows a number of projects in process.

Part C: Planning a Conscious Consumption Artwork

Step 1. Students are to revisit their lists from Part A of this lesson. Invite them to reflect on an item besides coffee cups that they would like to reduce in their everyday lives which may also work well as a Gwyneth Leech-style artwork. Explain that they will be spending some time outside of class (here let students know how long they have between this class and the class you intend to conduct the final part of this lesson in) collecting 5-10 examples of the item that they choose, then making their own artworks on these items, using Pitt Artist pens or Playing & Learning Brush Markers.

Tell the class that they should make sure to stay safe while collecting these items. Do not collect items from bins or in the streets. Instead, get friends and family who they know will use these items anyway, to set them aside. If students are having any trouble collecting their items, invite them to raise this with you before the final art making lesson. This will allow you to brainstorm a solution together, such as approaching the school canteen or a local shop to set aside used items for them.

Step 2. Allow the class the remainder of this lesson to start planning their artworks in their VAPD. To begin this process, students brainstorm the items that they would like to collect and draw upon. Have students decide on the item that they will be using, making sure that this is something that will be easy to draw on using a marker. Also, invite students to write a plan of attack, i.e. how will they collect 5-10 of these items between now and the next class?

You may want to allow each student to borrow a Playing & Learning Brush Marker to take home. This will give students the opportunity to test how the pen works on their chosen item as they are collecting them.

Step 3. Have students consider how they will arrange their works for display. If students will need any additional resources to arrange their work, such as fishing line, blu tack or masking tape, invite them to start a conversation with you before the end of the lesson to discuss if these resources will be available or if an alternative is necessary.

Hot tip: This activity works well as an installation displayed somewhere public in the school. Areas where students often consume, such as playgrounds or canteens are great places to simulate discussion about conscious consumption amongst the wider school community.

Part D: Creating a Conscious Consumption Artwork

Step 1. Invite the class to share the everyday item choices as well as any early ideas about the final artwork they will be making. Students are then to set up their workspace with their VAPD and the items in front of them to inspire their art making process.

Now, inspire students by showing them the following clip:

Custom shoes with Multimark Marker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQAK1M2QjyM)

Step 2. Encourage students to select a colour pallet for their art work. Show students the following clip:

How to use the Pencil Colour Wheel by Faber-Castell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-yRL47LSNM).

Encourage students to use a colour wheel or the Colour Theory factsheet, to ensure that they select a complementary colour pallet when designing their work.

Step 3. Allow students to collect a selection of artist pens or brush markers and begin their artworks. If any areas of students' items are slightly resistant to mark making, you can use a bullet point grip marker to create a bolder line or consider painting/priming the surface of the items.

Step 4. Once the drawing aspect of the art making is done. Invite students to begin constructing the displays of their works. Once all artworks are complete, organise a gallery walkthrough, allowing students a brief opportunity to talk about their works.

Step 5. As this work is temporary in nature, be sure to encourage students to take photos of them as well as their friends' work once they are finished.

Hot tip: If the school has any social media account, consider arranging for images of students' work to be posted. This allows the message of conscious consumption to permeate the wider school community.

Reflection

Organise a gallery walk through students' completed works. As the class view their classmates' work they complete the following peer assessment on at least two art works (available on the Student Worksheet):

Which aspects of the visual design of this work do you find most appealing and why?
What message do you believe this work is conveying and why?
In their next artwork how do you believe this artist could extend on this piece?

Differentiated Learning

Extension – further students' critical analysis of Gwyneth Leech's art by adding the following steps on to Part B of the lesson:

Invite your students to form their groups again, and visit Gwyneth Leech’s website. Ask the class to explore Gwyneth’s coffee cups project on her website by clicking on ‘Cups’, ‘Windows’ and selecting an exhibition from the list of six on the right-hand side of the site. Have students scroll through these images at their own pace for a few minutes.

Then instruct the class to work in their groups to decide on a single photo from the exhibition pages that best captures one of the messages that they identified after watching the video in step 2. Based on this photo, the group is to organise a class conversation (2 minutes maximum presentation).

In this class conversation, the students will raise the following points:

why they chose this image
what message they believe it represents and why they think this

Add this criteria to the board and allow the class 10 minutes to plan their class conversation.

If possible, project Gwyneth’s website to the whole class, invite each group to navigate to the photo they have selected and to begin their 2 minute presentations.

As students present, be sure to keep a record of the messages that they believe Gwyneth’s work covers. You can do this on a whiteboard or in a document opened on the computer that is projecting the photos. Once all groups have presented, draw the class together to look at the list of messages that you have created based on their presentations. Work with the class to group similar messages on the list. If using a digital document, cut and paste messages on the list, moving them until they are in rough categories. If using a whiteboard, simply add a common number at the beginning of similar messages. Where possible, have the class suggest brief headings for these groups you have now created for example: environmental sustainability, conscious consumption, or community art.

Provisions for Learning Support – Allow students to work on a smaller scale artwork. This could be a single item that they have collected. This will also allow you to remove or reduce the display aspect of the art making activity.

Teacher Reflection

Creative Sustainability - The Art of Conscious Consumption

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