Delivering a screen printing workshop at a local secondary school.

We caught up with (Secondary) Art and Design PGCE trainee, Abbee Martin, who recently delivered a screen printing workshop at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA), a local secondary school.

Here is what she had to tell us about her experience:

“This was a very valuable learning experience for both myself and the students at BACCA who don’t get much of a chance to try out new techniques. I wanted them to be able to try screen printing with the emulsion on the screen rather than just stencils. The workshop was planned to enable students to be able to make parts of the sets for their school play; ‘The High School Musical’, along with advertising posters to put up around the school. It gave me the opportunity to test out some of the skills from my BA and put these into a classroom context with a group of students that were excited and eager to learn – this was used as a reward for all of their hard work getting the play ready and in lessons.

The build-up to the workshop took lots of organisation, messaging various technicians to get the screens prepped and every way of doing the workshop was considered. If I couldn’t get hold of the emulsion of light bed to expose the images, then how would stencils work? what would these need to be made out of to get the most use and least mistakes etc.

“Starting the workshop, I introduced myself and got to know the students. I explained the process of how to put the images onto the screens and what all the equipment was called. They seemed eager to get into it so explained the setup and how to mix the paint. I gave a quick demonstration, making sure to tell them to apply even pressure and not to do more than 3 passes. This was something that the students had never been able to properly try and the excitement on their faces made this very clear. They listened carefully asking lots of very thoughtful questions.

“The main thing I took from this was that even though it took a huge amount of preparation and lots of arm strain to carry the equipment and way too many buses! It was well worth it to see the look on the student’s faces when they created their first successful prints. I would love to run more of these and be able to share my printing knowledge to inspire the future generation of artists about printing.”

Course lead, Julie Howard said: “Abbee arranged this workshop in addition to her placement, it was a great opportunity for her to get involved in, and she has given the students, she worked with, a fabulous experience who would not have otherwise had this brilliant exposure to printing.”

Find out more about studying (Secondary) Art and Design PGCE at Brighton.