Greetings, arts educators!
In this special multi-part Wisdom Wednesday, the CommonTime Team will explore how CommonTime fits within the IGCSE Visual Arts Guide!
The Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) Art & Design syllabus encourages the learner’s personal response via imagination, sensitivity, conceptual thinking, powers of observation, and analytical ability. By developing their skills in two- and three-dimensional design, learners improve their problem-solving in visual and tactile forms. An additional benefit of the IGCSE Visual Arts Guide is that it aids learners in developing an awareness of the importance of the visual arts.
In the first part of this miniseries, we’ll discuss how CommonTime relates to the aims of the IGCSE Visual Arts Guide.
CommonTime provides an innovative experience that increases engagement and solidifies concrete learning that is connected to real life. Art teachers in the IGCSE can benefit from enriching their educational journey by exposing their students to working artists from around the world, right here on CommonTime. Not only do artists expand upon your knowledge base as an educator, but they provide an out-of-this-world cultural experience! CommonTime is the only Arts Education focused online booking platform that connects educators and learners to world-class artists.
Here’s how CommonTime connects to each of the aims of the IGCSE Arts Guide:
1. Record from direct observation and personal experience, and develop creativity, visual awareness, and critical and cultural understanding.
With a CommonTime teaching artist, students gain insight into the creative process by speaking and collaborating with teaching artists who can inform them on cultural arts techniques. Foster cultural understanding by learning art forms from Asia, Europe, North America
2. Have an imaginative, creative, and personal response.
Bringing a CommonTime teaching artist into the classroom is a chance for students to ask artists from different cultures how they respond to their surroundings. It also allows students to respond artistically to the work of others, other cultures, and other techniques. This information – skills and experiences shared by professional artists – allows students to better respond to and reflect on their own personal experience.
3. Have confidence, enthusiasm, and a sense of achievement in the practice of art and design.
Working with a CommonTime teaching artist gives students an opportunity to build confidence in themselves and their work. By providing students with an enriched learning experience with international mindedness, they will have better engagement and more enthusiasm in their work.
4. Engage and experiment with a range of media, materials and techniques, including new media and technologies, where appropriate.
Collaboration with a CommonTime teaching artist encourages experimentation with different types of art, such as encaustics, color mixing, acrylics, watercolors, advanced brush techniques, alternative photography processes, and more.
5. Experience of working in relevant frameworks and exploration of manipulative skills necessary to form, compose and communicate in two and/or three dimensions.
Working with a CommonTime architectural artist, for instance, helps students expand their vision of 3d art and connect it to real life situations.
6. Develop a working vocabulary relevant to the subject and an interest in, and a critical awareness of, other practitioners, environments, and cultures.
Learning from a CommonTime artist increases access to non-english art vocabulary, and helps build interest and awareness in other known or unknown art forms.
7. Develop investigative, analytical, experimental, interpretative, practical, technical and expressive skills which aid effective and independent learning.
Introducing students to new types of art fosters enthusiasm for independent learning. CommonTime has a growing community of professional artists from all over the world. Have your students worked independently with a professional artist before?
As you can see, CommonTime is the perfect complement to the IGCSE Visual Arts Guide. Booking teaching artists on CommonTime is an easy and accessible way to give your students the tools they need to succeed!
To book an artist on CommonTime, sign in and browse our growing catalogue of vetted, professional teaching artists.
Don’t have a CommonTime account? Sign up for free!
Stay tuned for the next part of this Wisdom Wednesday miniseries, where we’ll outline some ways you can use CommonTime to fulfill the goals of the IGCSE Arts Guide!