Jeremy Turner

Portfolio: Community and Group Projects

Working with groups can be challenging in many ways, especially if a good quality product is required as the final outcome. With drop in summer holiday projects, such as the AYA Picnic Bench in Bourton Park, Buckingham, patience is required as teaching beginners can be very repetitive when people come and go and more drop in. In school work, I have refined how I share carving skills down to a few simple processes that give children the basic grounding in safe and efficient tool use. With blind and partially sighted groups the challenge is whether to leave out the carving and find other means of creative expression. I once delivered a woodcarving session to a group of deaf children. With them, while the level of noise they made was irrelevant, I did have to translate my instructions into a much more graphic, mimed language. Fortunately a team of signers was also on hand to assist. The final thing is to tailor the project so that learning the skills, enabling creativity to blossom, and achieving a finished product as a result all occur within the time given and the budget allowed for the project.