Vivid Ideas 2018 - Our Student's Perspective

This year for Vivid Ideas, Bradfield students staged The New Creatives - 'Hidden in Plain View', a multi-modal interactive exhibition revealed Sydney’s hidden stories and secrets. Secrets have long been buried. Stories that have never been shared. This event will unravel the hidden mysteries that are in our everyday plain view.

Students applied for project roles and created works  in film, photography, social media, art and design, performance in dance, music and drama and community storytelling. Based on the book Hidden in Plain View by Paul Irish, The New Creatives uncovered new creative talent from school students, not just from Bradfield but across Sydney, as part of an innovative approach to senior secondary education. The event was the culmination of a 17 week project. 

Nurturing young creative minds is at the top of the agenda of educators, yet inspiring and guiding students within the rigid academic structure of the HSC can be challenging. With so much focus on exams and scores, many of our young creatives are becoming disillusioned with traditional education. With a real world client and an intriguing theme of discovery, the New Creatives event provided opportunities for students to connect with Sydney’s people, history and land.

Hidden In Plain View - Hannah McKay

My group worked on a collaborative mural inspired by Paul Irish’s book ‘Hidden in Plain View’. The mural explored the hidden stories of Sydney’s coastline;the left side representing the natural, pre-colonised landscape, moving across into a more industrial, modern landscape and finishing with Wendy Whitley’s garden. We focused on specific elements from the past including the boatshed, a meeting place for Aboriginal people and The Palace, the beginnings of the Powerhouse museum. The Vivid project week (where we had a dedicated week in the studio) was a positive experience overall. I was initially nervous about completing our collaborative mural, as its size was quite overwhelming. This made it even more rewarding when it was complete and we saw our work hanging in the gallery.

 

Our group did experience some conflicting ideas about how to represent certain elements, however we attempted to include everyone’s ideas by using multiple art styles across the mural. We were also able to collaborate with the music group to build a soundtrack to accompany the mural. The Vivid Hidden in Plain View exhibition at the end of the week was very rewarding. Seeing the artwork I worked on displayed in the gallery space was amazing as it was displayed so professionally. After putting so much work into the mural, it was very nice to see people appreciating it as they walked through the exhibition. We were also able to meet Paul Irish, whose book Hidden in Plain View inspired our mural. He pointed out many of the elements from his book that we had represented in the mural. He was very pleased by the level of detail we had included and the resemblance to Sydney’s coastline.

 

 

Transformed Landscapes - Grace Thomson

My group made three conceptual garments based on the environmental changes around Sydney over time. The fabrics represented the hidden stories these changes. We visited Balls Head and saw how sandstone had been removed to benefit human beings; this was reflected in one of the garment pieces.  I enjoyed that I could work with my friends and that everyone in my group was passionate about the project. I learned many skills such as using the industrial sewing machine, altering patterns, fitting a garment on a model, creating an exhibition space and talking to the public about the project. The only challenging aspect was having the whole group decide which photos to use, but we were able to work through this by talking through it. We made sure we made decisions that were for the greater of the whole group, rather than individual ones.