Katie Schwab works with textiles and installation to explore personal, social and material histories of craft, design and education. Her research focuses on twentieth century domestic interiors, civic architecture and play environments.

After a general call application process for former residents, Katie was awarded the Associates Artists in Schools Residency – a fully funded one-week residency for a Cove Park Associate based in Scotland. The residency was linked to the creation and delivery of two half-day workshops for pupils of John Logie Baird Primary School (Nurture Unit), in Helensburgh, within an area experiencing a high level of deprivation as measured by Scottish Government’s Index of Multiple Deprivation.

During her residency, Katie worked on ‘The Third Teacher’, a new project looking at examples of nature play spaces and modes of engaging with outdoor landscapes and weather systems. She worked with students from John Logie Baird Primary School to explore different modes of engaging with the physical and material landscape at Cove Park. Many of the children at John Logie Baird Primary School have limited access to both nature and artistic activities, making the outdoor learning component of the workshop an important feature of the curriculum.

Reflecting on Katie’s workshop, Helen Normington of John Logie Baird Primary School’s Nurture Unit said:

‘The children particularly loved starting the day at the beach making their ‘collections’. Seeing the concentration and enjoyment on the children’s faces was heart-warming. Also lovely was seeing the pride in their collections and how they showed each other what they had collected and shared thoughts about their items. It was a real opportunity to develop communication skills, use of descriptive vocabulary and warm friendships.

Upon return from the beach to the studio at Cove Park, the children once more listened carefully to Katie’s suggestions and set about working on creating sculptures with their collected items – and the end results were fantastic. But just as impressive was the opportunity this gave the children to work through a process creatively and imaginatively on their own independent piece of sculpture work but with the sense of it all coming together as a shared project. The children gave sustained focus and extended concentration to their pieces of art.  An element of resilience building was there too, as they changed and altered their creations to reach a finished product they were pleased with, both in the studio and again in the outdoor landscape.

A nice rounding off activity was when the children each spoke to explain their thoughts behind how they went about designing and creating their sculptures/pieces of art. They listened respectfully to one another and offered praise and gave reflections to one another, which built up their self esteem and confidence.

The entire day’s project was incredibly well thought out and achieved so much. Throughout the whole day Katie was wonderfully supportive to all the children, ensuring motivation and engagement, offering direction, giving suggestions and a suitable level of guidance but always ensuring the children had plenty of scope to include personal creativity and put their own mark on their work.

Although it was somewhat dictated by circumstance it was really wonderful for the children to be able to participate in the activity at Cove Park, rather than having a resident artist visit us in school. I know in the past when my pupils have had the opportunity to participate in an art based activity involving a resident artist from Cove Park, the impact has been immense and long lasting, staying in the children’s memories and  something they talk about months and even years afterwards. I have absolutely no doubt that this will be exactly the same and the benefits and happy memories of the positive experience will remain with these children for a long tome to come.’

This residency is supported by The Hugh Fraser Foundation.