Explore the world of art

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Setting up this activity

• This activity has four parts. The first and second should take about 10 minutes (plus time at home), the third about 15 minutes for each artist, and the fourth about half an hour for each artist.
• Not everyone will want to do this badge, and that’s OK. It may be nice for everyone to do ‘Choose your art’ together, so they get a feel for the badge, but then others may want to work on something else (for example, the Musician Staged Activity Badge or Photographer Activity Badge) instead.
• People will be ready to ‘Share the interest’ at different times. You may want to limit it to one or two people each meeting so it doesn’t get overwhelming. Make sure to leave enough time (you could start by trying about 15 minutes for each person) – it’s up to you whether you do it at the beginning or end.
• The final part of this activity (‘Create art’) could be done at home or during a meeting. People who aren’t working towards this badge could get on with another craft or help the artists.

Choose your art

1. Gather everyone together and explain that, according to the dictionary, art is the ‘expression of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power’.
2. Remind everyone that art isn’t limited to painting and drawing – people could think about music (including pop and rap), sculpture, theatre, cinema, architecture, dancing, or anything else similar.
3. Ask everyone to work in pairs, or small groups, to think of as many examples of art forms that they’ve come across in the last week, or even today.
4. Everyone should take a piece of A4 paper and cut it into six roughly equal pieces.
5. Ask everyone to write something they’re interested in at the top of each piece of paper. You may want to suggest people don’t put ‘Scouts’ as it covers so many different interests – it works best if people get specific.
6. Everyone should try to write how each interest involves ‘human creative skill and imagination’. If an interest doesn’t involve human creative skill and imagination, they should put the piece of paper to one side.
7. Now everyone should try to write how people may do each of their remaining activities socially and where they may go to do it.
8. Finally everyone should look at their remaining pieces of paper. They should have some ideas of what they could use as their art form. You may need to get creative – for example, if someone’s written down playing video games, they could explore how the art is created for the game or character design.

Get enthusiastic

1. Everyone should think about how they’ll explore the art form or interest they chose. They may want to chat about their ideas in small groups. Remind people that they don’t need to plan to do everything at once. It may take a while to make their visits and find out about their interest, and that’s OK.
2. Each artist will need to make two visits connected to their interest. They should think about where they’d like to go and what they’ll collect to show people.
3. Each artist will also need to show that they know a lot about a particular topic that’s part of their interest (for example, a particular artist or performance). They should think about what they’d like to explore.
4. Finally, each artist will need to make a list of major events, exhibitions, or venues connected with their subject.

Share the interest

1. The artist should bring in any items connected to their visits or topic. You may want to set a limit (for example, 10 items) if you think people may bring lots with them.
2. Everyone should sit in a circle. They should carefully pass the artist’s items around the circle. If the artist has anything especially fragile or precious it’s OK if they want to take it around the circle instead.
3. People should take it in turns to guess what the items are and why they’re important.
4. The artist should use their guesses to start discussing their items. They should talk about both of the visits they made, and the details of their topic.

Create art

1. Each artist should collect pictures related to the list of major events, exhibitions, or venues they made during ‘Get enthusiastic’. They should spread out the images so they can see them all at once.
2. They should then look at the pictures and choose an item that symbolises what they love about the interest. It could be a sign, a building, or a particular item of clothing.
3. Each artist should gather things from their interest that they’re happy to turn into a craft, for example, photos, tickets, leaflets, or drawings. They should lay it all out along with the clean recycling.
4. Everyone should use the materials (plus clean recycling) to craft the item they chose in step two. They could try to use environmentally friendly ways to connect things together such as string or washi tape (or making slots for things to connect).
5. Each artist should show their finished craft to a small group. They should explain what item they’ve made and what they made it from. They should tell people why they care about their interest, as well as how their craft represents some of the events, exhibitions, or venues on their list.