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Artwork 11 - Nonsuch Primary School Mural
Totality by Julia Ball Fog Islands by Gudbjörg Lind Jónsdóttir Averted Side by Elspeth Owen
Wire Sculpture by Rachel Higgins Bucky Ball by Sir Harry Kroto Inuit Whale-bone Sculpture by Artist unknown
Video Stage1 by Stine Ljungdalh Fear by Isambard Poulson Heart Valve Reconstruction by Francis Wells
Wishful Thinking by Emma Hart Nonsuch Primary School Mural by Jasmine Pradissitto, Stuart Mayes and children of Nonsuch Primary School Lady and Lord Puttnam’s Polar Bear by Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson
Generalized Explicit Reciprocity Law by Hannu Harkonen Southern lights by Alison Mitchell Hillside II by Gudrún Kristjánsdóttir
De Curso Stellarum (2005) by Richard James History of Space by Frank Shaw
Nonsuch Primary School Mural
Eight acrylic paintings each 45 cm x 45 cm and a batik 90 cm x 100 cm    Print | Enlarge
All artworks are copyrighted
Jasmine Pradissitto, Stuart Mayes and children of Nonsuch Primary School
Artist's website - http://www.pradissitto.com

Jasmine Pradissitto, Stuart Mayes and children of Nonsuch Primary School

The specifications for the piece were about crossing boundaries between: subjects, ages, abilities and, ultimately, geography, as it was intended to link the science labs on one side of the building with the art rooms on the other. But most importantly, throughout the making of the mural we were trying to address the preconceptions that children (in fact people as a whole) have about the artist and the scientist and what they do.

The artist is often thought of as creative, intuitive and disorganised, while the scientist is seen as methodical, calculating, rational and invariably male! This was illustrated by responses from the children on the first day, in which they automatically assumed the female (who had made the ‘messy, loose' work) was the artist, and the man a scientist. Over the week, we tried to break down some of these stereotypes so that the children could appreciate that scientists bring artistry and creativity to their work and many artists bring method and order to theirs.

At the start of each session of the practical ‘art' work, we also concentrated on the ‘process' common to both artist and scientist:

  • Asking questions (hypothesising);
  • Creating and experimenting;
  • Observing, communicating, comparing, ordering;
  • Evaluation and interpretation.

Ultimately, art and science are just two different ways of understanding and knowing the world around us. There is so much emphasis currently on creative thinking skills that this seems to be an ideal way of get the pupils thinking and' doing' creatively as well as scientifically. If we can convince one child who thinks that they are good at one subject that in fact they can also do the other, then the integration of science and art has been a success.

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Ideas for the Mural

Science education at nearly all levels very much concentrates on predictive, Newtonian science, i.e. that something in nature can be measured and altered in a measurable way. The example to the children was of a small rocket being let off in the class and the quantity of ‘fuel' being varied such that they could see an obvious change (which they could predict). However , most things in nature and indeed our lives, are not predictable and are known as ‘chaotic', e.g. weather, disease, politics, money etc.

The idea of ‘chaos' was presented simply by getting the children to flap their arms and to think about the possible effect of the small wind that they made. Telling them that somewhere in the world they could have made a hurricane happen, really captured their imagination and was the start of day 1's activities. The idea of a small cause leading to a large and unpredictable effect is chaos theory.

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© 2007 MST, Institute of Education, University of London . All rights reserved. Last updated 06 January 2007

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