Last Wednesday we visited Lyndon School in Solihull to show their students the Camera Obscura.
This was the result of a conversation we had over the summer at CoCoMad, with Mr Spurr, a teacher at the school who took a shine to the device when he saw it at the family festival. Although we've had a lot of different conversations about going into schools, this was the first that actually came to fruition..
We ended up showing the device to several different classes: Year 7 Science, Year 7 History, Year 9 Art & Design and GCSE Photography. We gave a short talk about the project and camera obscuras, and then let the students see for themselves, whilst their classmates waved through the camera.
Year 7 @LyndonScience using the handheld #cameraobscura courtesy of @BhamObscura at @LyndonSchool this morning pic.twitter.com/GqKfOi5WgO
— The Switch (@LyndonSwitch) October 14, 2015
A fantastic day @lyndonschool with @BhamObscura exploring #photography origins & concepts #light #cameras #images A photo posted by Mr Spurr @LyndonSwitch (@lyndonswitch) on
It was really interesting seeing the different reactions from a ranges of students and hearing the questions that they came up with for us.
We had some great feedback from the staff, and one of the students even said 'This is actually good' so we count that as a success!
The schools offer is one of many things we are hoping to develop as part of the Arts Council Funding we had confirmation of last week so this will hopefully be the first of many.