Climate Change Graffiti

We've got another new module up on the website.  YEY!  Climate Change Graffiti is an upper school art module developed by Anna Henshall who has developed a couple of other great art modules for us already...... Design for the Future & Painting Australia's Natural Habitat.

This one, as the title suggests, gets studetns to create a graffiti artwork that gets across the message about climate change and encourages people to change and act to stop climate change.  I think I would have really enjoyed doing this one at school.  I always like editing the Art ones as I learn loads of things myslef and get really inspired.  I hope that some schools take this on and allow their studetns to brighten up some boring school walls with an important message.

The module also gets them to look at the work of local Perth Graffiti artist Stormie Mills and I felt particularly cultured when I came across these in a car park in Subiaco last time I was up in Perth as I knew they were by Stormie.  They're pretty affecting too I'm sure you'll agree.  He looks at beauty in decay and people's resilience even when things don't seem to be going well.

In the module students analyse how he gets his message across and then think about how they will communicate theirs and develop their own style.

Grab your spray cans now!  (but of course make sure its legal to paint where you plan!!)

Lucy

Branding BP - by Greenpeace

Well the BP oil leak must be the biggest environmental disaster of recent times. BP have come out of it looking pretty bad too, even though they've got lots of money to spend on advertising and PR with the media as it is now, the internet and social networking sites its very hard for them to project a positive image or convince the public they are a 'green' company when its so easy to find evidence to the contrary.

BP rebrabded a few years ago from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum and changed their shield logo to a logo, a softer look meant to show that they were focussing not just on oil but on other alternative forms of energy. Well Greenpeace are now having a go at rebranding them again. The competition was open to the public and you can have a look and vote for your favourite here http://rebrandbp.greenpeace.org.uk/

Uee these in your business lessons to consider marketing and branding. What messages are the Greenpeace rebrands getting across? How do they do it? How must companies change in their methods of PR? Do you think the internet and social media mean that companies will really have to act as they claim/ change their ways of operating?

You could do similar in English and Art. Get studetns to design their own logo. Think of other companies whose businesses are not sustainable and think how you would rebrand them to demonstrate this to other people so that people brough other more sustainable or ecologically friendly products.

Lucy

Climate Change and Art

This is a picture of a 'Climate Refugee Camp' an art installation by hermann josef hack.

This is another idea which could be used in Society and Environment to start thinking about the effects of climate change and in Art as inspiration for students to create their own works to raise awareness of and encourage people to act to prevent climate change .

• Why might we get climate refugees?

• What does Being a refugee mean?
• Why has he done this in a main square of Berlin?
• What message is he trying to get across?

Lucy

Great Starter Pictures - Chris Jordan Consumption

My post yesterday was all about consumption and then I came across this artist Chris Jordan. The statistics of consumption can sometimes seem a bit arbitrary but his photos really help get across the scale of our waste and the rate a t which we are using resources. They are in a series called 'Running the numbers', click on the link to see all the images and the stastics behind tham. e.g. 'Paper Cups' an image of 410,000 paper cups the number of disposable hot drink cups used in the US every 15 (!yes 15) minutes, 'Plastic bags' 60,000 plastic bags the number used int he US every 5 seconds or 'Toothpicks' which depicts 100 million toothpicks, the number of trees cut down every year in the US to provide the paper for junk mail.

Thought provoking stuff. I think these would make great images for a starter. Get students to guess what they are showing (on his website you can then zoom the image to get a close up) and the numbers involved. It makes the unimaginable scale of our consumption and waste somehow imaginable (and quite horrifying).