The resource is targeted at Art and Design students at Key Stage 4 and above and activities can easily be adapted to meet the needs of your particular classes. The following extracts from QCA guidelines show how a visit to the Hull University Art Collection, plus the contents of this resource, will help students to meet GCSE criteria for Art and Design.

2.1 All specifications must give students opportunities to develop:

• creative and imaginative powers, and the practical skills for communicating and expressing ideas, feelings and meanings in art, craft and design;
• investigative, analytical, experimental and interpretative capabilities, aesthetic understanding and critical skills;
• understanding of codes and conventions of art, craft and design and awareness of contexts in which they operate;
• knowledge and understanding of art, craft and design in contemporary societies and in other times and cultures.

3.1 Art and design specifications must require integrated critical, practical and theoretical study in art, craft and design which includes first hand experience of original work.

3.2 A specification must require candidates to develop knowledge and understanding of:

• how ideas, feelings and meanings are conveyed in images and artefacts;
• a range of art, craft and design processes in two and/or three dimensions, including, where appropriate, information and communication technology;
• how images and artefacts relate to their social, historical and cultural context;
• a variety of approaches, methods and intentions and the contribution of contemporary practitioners and others from different times and cultures to continuity and change in art, craft and design

4.1 GCSE specifications in art and design should provide opportunities for developing and generating evidence for assessing the key skills listed below:

• application of number
• communication
• information technology
• improving own learning and performance
• problem solving
• working with others.

Extension activities

You may want to incorporate some of the following ideas into your teaching that build on the work students have completed in this resource. Each idea has been linked to GCSE assessment objectives.

AO1:record observations, experiences and ideas in forms that are appropriate to intentions
Ask students to create a ‘catalogue’ for some of the art works they saw at the Collection. Using the notes they made during their visit, they should identify a minimum of eight works and produce a brief written summary of the following:

• the art work (date, title, artist’s name)
• biographical details about the artist social context (what was happening in the world when the work was created)
• influences on the artist (style, technique) what makes this piece so important to the student that they have chosen to include it in their catalogue?

The information should be illustrated, if possible, using postcards, pictures from the Internet or by the student’s own interpretation of the work. This activity can be adapted for students who do not visit the Collection by asking them to catalogue work from a particular period or genre that interests them.

AO2: analyse and evaluate images, objects and artefacts showing understanding of context
Sylvia Gosse’s painting Madrid Crowd takes its theme from a contemporary newspaper account. Many other paintings in the collection provide a valuable insight into daily life during the period 1890–1940 through their representation of household interiors and dress.

Ask students to develop their own collection of images to represent life today. They have already been asked to think about how they would represent contemporary life. Now ask them to collaborate and work in small groups to produce a more extensive piece of work. This could take many forms such as:

• a video diary
• a design scrapbook that combines both the students’ own work and images collated from magazines, newspapers and the Internet
• a painting or sculpture that, to them summarises some of the major preoccupations of present-day life.

The overall aim should be that, as a class, they can produce a body of work that can be displayed for a wider audience. The resource has already asked them to develop ideas about establishing a gallery space; they should now be able to put those ideas into practice and create their own exhibition.

AO3: develop and explore ideas using media, processes and resources, reviewing,modifying and refining work as it progresses, and

AO4: present a personal response, realising intentions and making informed connections with the work of others

Ask students to choose one piece of work from the collection that they particularly like. Using the notes they made during their visit, they should produce a critique of the work, explaining its appeal and what they noticed about it.

Ask them to produce their own work based on the same theme (e.g. a still life, portrait, interior, an event). They do not need to use the same medium, however. Ask them to think laterally. Hull University Art Collection has a painting by Sickert entitled Mornington Crescent Nude which shows a woman in an intimate bed-sitting room interior. Tracey Emin evoked a similar theme with her installation My Bed, which was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999. If students have chosen a portrait, they might create their own equivalent through sculpture, graphic design or needlework.