Whāngarei Library – Visual Poetry Jam – (28 March 2024)

Kamo Intermediate School joined us at the library for a full session of creative exploration of the Embodied Creativity Framework and Creative Composition challenges using devices to tell stories. Luckily the library is a beautiful place to start with and our first challenge was simply to take a picture. This gives us a baseline to work with and to see what the students see without any tuition. We had them set their images up around the table for us all to look at and give collective feedback on. We had some beautiful work to start with but with many of the common problems of not paying attention to background distractions or composition skill bases.

We started to build their composition vocabulary and skills by learning about rule of thirds, frame within a frame, leading lines, bugs eye view, and birds eye view. We went on a photo walk around the city and gathered some really lovely imagery.

The students were thoroughly engaged with one of the students turning to me and enthusiastically saying – “I had completely forgotten I was in school”.
When we got back to the library we had two more learning experiences for the tamarki – Post production using Lightroom and Snapseed on their phones. This supported learning about exposure and colour correction and also we experimented with using double exposure in Snap seed. The students were taught how to shift and image to a coloured monochrome and then we showed them our boxes full of monochromatic fabrics that covered the rainbow.
The students then used every colour in the rainbow to create pieces using the treasures they brought with them.
Several of the students then donated their images to the Rainbow Challenge.

Support provided by
Whāngarei District Council
Whāngarei Creative Communities
COGS Whāngarei / Kaipara
New Zealand Lotteries