Went in to Our Lady of Muswell school in North London on Friday to talk to 60 year 5 students (c.10 yrs old) about the Big Art Project [I go once a year to talk about whatever I am working on at Channel 4 at the time - last year was My New Home and the year before was the Big Roman Dig].

I showed them 3 of the Watch This Space Three Minute Wonder short films broadcast a few weeks ago on Channel 4 - the ones featuring the sites in St Helens, Sheffield and Burnley - and we spent a few minutes getting members of the two classes to show where all the sites were on a map (Burnley was the one that really tested them).

No-one in the two classes knew what a 'colliery' was and they were fascinated by the insight into the life of a coal miner. They also found the poem voice-over of interest (read by Johnny Vegas) as they'd been studying writing poetry this term in Literacy lessons.

On a show of hands, of the 60 ten year olds only 3 found the Sheffield cooling towers attractive (about a dozen of them had see the towers in real life). They did however find the notion of a landmark compelling and highlighted the London Eye as one they particularly associated with their city.

The Burnley film struck a chord with them because of the youth of the contributors. They liked the idea of improving your environment through art.

The films worked really well in the classroom as a springboard for conversation enabling us to cover a lot of ground in an hour and a bit - from history (e.g. the great public art project of the First World War memorials across the UK) to geography (e.g. so where exactly is the Isle of Mull?) to technology (how to use the Big Art Mob mobile blogging dimension of the project) to PHSE (e.g. the transvestite contributor in the Sheffield film).

Photo above courtesy of UKphoto.tv on Big Art Mob