antonia aitken
Teaching practice.
I am a skilled and passionate art educator. I have spent the past 15 years working in higher education, teaching and developing tertiary curriculum in printmaking, drawing and critical practices. I have worked in the community arts sector for 20 years, designing and delivering high-quality, experiential studio and field-based learning experiences for and in collbaoraiton with diverse community groups. Below are some of the community projects I have designed and delivered in recent years. Please get in touch to organise a workshop or learn more about my teaching approach.
Working with First Nations communities with Basil Hall Editions (BHE)
In recent months I have been working with BHE taking our printmaking and artist development workshops to Waringarri Aboriginal Arts in Kununurr, WA and Waralungku Arts in Boroloola, NT.
Peter Underwood Centre for Educational Attainment, University of Tasmania
in 2017 I designed and delivered a series of outreach workshops for young people in regional and remote schools in the Derwent Valley region of Tasmania. We focused on notions of self identity through portraiture and looked at the long legacy of self portraiture in Australian art history. How do portraits tell a story of both the individual and of ones culture and society more broadly? The workshops had two key focuses. Firstly, to support schools to engage with the Young Archies youth portrait award held each year at the University of Tasmania, and secondly, to develop outreach programs that introduced new ways of making art led by professional creative practitioners and creating pathways for future univerity study.
Artist-in-Schools programs - Evatt Primary, Canberra & Eurongilly School, NSW
2013 artsACT Artist-in-Schools Residency Program
The Artist-in-Schools Project that I delivered at Evatt Primary School in Canberra in 2013 was aimed at giving students and staff an opportunity to work with a practicing artist and to be introduced to new printmaking and drawing approaches. Over 9 weeks I worked with 14 primary and 2 pre-school classes (over 350 young people), through a series of day-long workshops.
These workshops explored their connection to the school environment, with each class taking a walk around the school grounds with me to collect plants and found objects that then became the inspiration for both the drawing and printmaking exercises back in the studio. The final artwork that I made for the school was a series of large-scale screenprinted fabric designs for the foyer space as a permanent artwork to clebrate the Schools 40th Anniversary. The designs were made using the young peoples ink drawings as the source material and guiding the colour and form.
2013 artsACT Artist-in-Schools Residency Program
My week spent as Artist-in-Residence at Eurongilly Primary School in April this year with 22 excited young people and their teachers was fantastic. The kids were asked to bring in a important object and tell the story of the object. Many of these stories were about life on a farm, significant family members and pets and fun family holidays. The stories were then translated into drawings and printed books over three days of workshops. The kids learnt monoprint and collograpah printmaking techniques - simple processes that can be used in the school beyond the project. Through this process we exchanged skills and knowledge, the kids getting to experience making guided by a practicing artist and me getting to learn about their community, environment and personal insights. I also had the privilege of being billeted by four of the families over the week, letting me experience the warmth and generosity of the Eurongilly community and allowing me to live on some of the farms in the area - a new and inspiring experience for this city artist. Feeding poddy lambs, patting piglets, sitting on the porch of Wantabadgery Station and watching 4-year old Eloise on her 4-wheel bike bringing in the cows were just some of the memorable moments.
