The Creatives Blog
Natasha Reynolds
The Lockdown in March meant as teachers we had to think creatively about ways to keep our students engaged while we all worked remotely. Our usual jovial face-to-face lessons had to take a different approach, but this didn’t phase our students who very quickly adapted to the new lessons. In Graphics, we opted to get competitive and Tuesdays became: ‘Design Your Tuesday’ - students were presented with short design briefs that had to be completed in a limited amount of time. The results were phenomenal and had staff blown away with what students were coming up with. As competitive as Design My Tuesday was, it also displayed the strong Ada community that was still able to thrive online, which was genuinely nice to be a part of, especially during the unpredictability of that time.
This is a great example of creativity from one of our students who is studying Graphics alongside Computer Science. This packaging and promotional advert was designed by Aleeza, who is now in Year 13. During Lockdown she created the concept and developed the branding for a perfume company called 'Boujee'.
Fast-forward to the start to the new academic year and all the students on the creative pathway have hit the ground running despite our new normal.
The Year 13s have returned to college this term optimistic after being away from their creative space for six months. The time away was not completely lost in back-to-back episodes of their favourite Netflix shows, as everyone has come back with sharpened digital design skills. To coincide with this, the students were pleasantly surprised with the equipment upgrade meaning they can work more like industry and produce high quality artwork for their projects and design portfolios. There are some really inspired and interesting projects being developed for their personal investigation which is part of the A-Level coursework- everything from Manga comics and character designs for computer games, to Editorial design for lifestyle magazines; all under the overarching theme of ‘Transformation’.
Our new Year 12 Graphic students have been learning about logo design and branding and getting to grips with using Illustrator. They have also been assigned an in-house design brief and are now applying their newly developed skills to create the branding for Ada’s first eSports team. Our new social distancing measures mean we cannot collaborate in the usual fashion, however we are now making great use of Jamboards to ensure we still get feedback from one another.
We are also super excited to now offer our students a qualification in Digital Creative Media Production as part of our Creators Pathway. Our new BTEC is being led by our (also new!) teacher Maya Marriott who comes with a wealth of experience and industry links. The incoming cohort on the new BTEC course have already been assigned their first live brief. In a matter of weeks the Year 12s have already established a fully operational production crew, including camera people, a director and casting agents. They are currently busy thriving in their new roles and creating content to promote the college which will debut on the Ada Youtube channel in a few weeks.
Despite the uncharted changes at Ada, it is really nice to be back and I am especially looking forward to the creativity the students bring this academic year.