Unique new books to boost creativity for junior secondary students

Melbourne, June, 2015 – Art teachers can now facilitate a boost in creativity as early as Year 7 and 8 with less effort according to a new dual-book supplement.

Critical and Creative thinking now ranks 4^th in the Australian Curriculum across all subjects after Literacy, Numeracy and ICT. This places its ‘organising elements’, including Generating Ideas, at the forefront of education in Australia. In Art classes, the Visual Diary plays a key role in this but traditionally does not come with a guide.

The Visual Diary Guide Teacher Edition and Student Workbook, published today, are by Hilary Senhanli, an artist-teacher with 20 years of experience who delivers Visual Diary talks to VCE students since 2009.

The Visual Diary has an explosive creative potential to be unlocked with proper guidance, according to her. The books set out to bring it from the sidelines to centre stage. The premise is that everyone has an artist in them and a trustworthy guide is needed to locate it.

With more than 40 open ended, short Visual Diary activities which are fun and achievable by all, she offers art teachers something new. While placing emphasis on the process, dubbed the Inspiration Process™, most activities can be done at home, require no preparation time and are linked to the process in the Teacher Edition and to Band and Content descriptions in the Australian Curriculum.

Senhanli argues that starting at an early age, students begin to work as artists do, becoming independent learners. They learn how to generate ideas, refine and develop them, annotate properly, create their own glossary and understand copyright rules.

For teachers, it means students walk in with ideas, source their own visual reference material and plan/execute their own experiments and exhibitions.  It also shows teachers how to encourage and harvest this creative output without getting overwhelmed.

The books are already endorsed by many secondary school teachers. Nerida Morrish, Year 9 Arts Coordinator at Ouyen P-12 College, captures the essence of the books best when she says they “are well researched and easy to read with very little jargon. Given that students often overlook the process and rush to make their final piece, it is great to see an emphasis on the process, which has been broken down into accessible sections. It encourages students to work over school breaks reinforcing that the artistic process is not limited to class time – hard to get seniors motivated if you don’t start these skills earlier.”

Heather Landman, the Head of Art at St. Margaret’s School, especially likes “the idea that you can use your Visual Diary to gain ideas - something that I do with my students. The structure used is far more detailed than other resources I have used in the past. It introduces concepts and practical applications in a more direct way”. Stella Greig, Senior VCE Art teacher at Killester College, finds “excellent chapters on annotations and glossary for building vocabulary.”

Two books are available as a sealed Teacher Pack at $54.50 and the Student Workbook at $31.77. They can be readily purchased at inspiringfun.com.au, Campion or ZartArt as of this writing.

The Book Launch is on 16 July 2015, 4:30pm at Zart Student Gallery, 4/41 Lexton Rd, Box Hill North.