Junior Arts

Junior Arts workshops prioritise skillsets embedded within Faculty of Arts programmes, and will be delivered in your classes by our Senior Arts students. This is a unique opportunity for your students to take part in workshops that explore issues relevant to their lives.

My village, my kainga

Writing and language is at its most exciting when it is able to make readers, receivers and/or audiences enter into the world of the storyteller/orator. In this workshop, students are challenged to delve deeper into poetry through simple exercises that effectively allow one to piece together their story.

By the end of this workshop, students can expect to have skeletons of poems that they can then develop into spoken word poems or re-purpose into another poetic form. Furthermore, they will have time to reflect on language's ability to bring their individual history and/or collective histories to the forefront.

Skillset: Communication and presentation skills 

Hack to the future

Set in 2024, when life has been discovered on Mars, this activity will be based around an election in New Zealand. In this scenario, the New Zealand voting system has been hacked by citizens of Mars. In groups, students will have to use clues to ascertain if they are black hat hackers, grey hat hackers or white hat hackers. They will also use the clues provided to ascertain why their group has hacked the New Zealand elections and which type of hackers they are representing.

Using prompt worksheets, students will problem solve and speculate about how the media might cover their hacking and what this means for society. This will enable a discussion about decision making and risk revolving around motivations for hacking as well as a general debate on the social construction of crime.

Skillset: Digital literacy and problem solving

The secret art history of music videos

Increasingly we live in a world that is saturated by images and visual information. Being able to read and understand images and their references across a range of media and platforms is crucial in articulating ideas and communicating effectively.

This workshop offers students the opportunity to identify and understand the ways that musicians and producers are influenced by and reference art in popular music videos. Pop music and videos offer a familiar and engaging point of departure for students to explore and come up with their own visual analyses of sequences and moments in videos by K-Pop artist BTS as well as Drake, Beyoncé, Jay Z, Katy Perry. They will learn how music videos reference a range of art forms and works including Renaissance paintings, Pop Art, Abstraction and Performance Art.

Skillset: Visual literacy and visual culture

What's hidden in arguments?

Everyday, people offer arguments to support their viewpoints and decisions, but they seldom fill in all the steps of those arguments. These missing, unspoken steps are known as 'suppressed' premises, without which the arguments will not work.

Interestingly, the unspoken premises are quite often either dubious or controversial. In this workshop students will be introduced to the task of identifying, and then questioning, suppressed premises.

Skillset: Critical thinking

Egyptology and gaming: battle for the throne of Egypt

Ancient Egypt has fascinated the gaming industry for decades and it has even more so in recent years with the increasing dominance of the multiplayer online genre. This workshop enables students to gain insight into what game developers look for when researching on Ancient Egypt, including aspects of Egyptian history and mythology.

Using a physical format to simulate an online gaming scenario, students assume the role of an Egyptian deity and take part in an epic battle arena game. Each student receives a character sheet, and each character has unique abilities that can affect gameplay. Students must work together with their teammates in order to contend and reclaim the divine throne of Egypt, so the importance of digital etiquette and cooperation is key to success.

Skillset: Digital etiquette and decision-making

Voyaging and settling the Pacific

The Pacific was the last region of Earth settled by humans. Part of this journey involved remarkable feats of ocean voyaging by Polynesian groups. Set 1,000 years ago when these groups voyaged to settle this last frontier, students will engage in a strategy based game to ‘settle the Pacific’.

In teams, students work to gather resources, select voyagers, travel, settle a new community, and sustain their community. Along the way, they will learn how anthropologists piece together information to understand this process.

Skillset: Team work and decision making

If you would like one of the Junior Arts workshops to be delivered in one of your classes, please contact us.

Molly Sutton
Email: juniorarts@auckland.ac.nz