Encourage your students to delve deep and explore their creative imaginations with this collage art lesson for KS4.
Giving students confidence in their imagination and their ability to explore the dynamism of merging observed and imagined imagery in sophisticated ways sets them up with amazing skills to continue to master throughout their education and beyond.
This project can be broken down into smaller units. Each works independently, or as an entirety to cover the year.
The starting point is for students to produce the most amazing mind map ever. This is essentially a window into their thoughts and ideas, reflecting on an initial teacher presentation.
The projects which can then be covered include:
- collage and layering
- photography and performance art
- drawing and painting
- sculptural responses.
Each can have a different subject matter such as ‘How do I perceive my reality?’. This can be very much about environment, places, spaces, physicality – explored in drawing or photography.
Distortion could be another theme. This would allow for unusual viewpoints, distorted surfaces, reflections, apps which distort etc.
This art and design lesson plan includes the following activities:
- Mind mapping, drawing on quotes from literature, photo collage and thought curation in the form of lists
- Creating a mixed media collage titled ‘What’s inside my head?’, utilising different physical materials, photography, digital image editing and chemigram/photogram processes (if you have a dark room)
Collage art lesson starter activity
Collect images, take photographs and sketch skulls (these do not need to be human). Discuss Marc Quinn’s head and do some research on it: how does it make you think and feel about your own creative processes and barriers?
Collect materials which can be used to develop collages. These can be photocopied multiple times to develop work such as the layered pieces Scott Hazard develops.
Ideally work should be original so photographs are particularly useful and first-hand sources are always better than images from Google.
Emma Delpech is a practising artist and teaches art at Sevenoaks School, Kent. Get more advice for helping students with their GCSE art final piece.
Similar resources
- Applied arts – Bauhaus graphics project and teaching ideas
- Political art – Encourage students to be political in their work
- How to learn lines – Bumper pack of methods and strategies
- Shakespearean insults – Mini quiz, insult generator and more
- Contextual research in art – Resource for secondary pupils
