Write on Art

These resources were developed by Galia Admoni, poet and Head of English at Friern Barnet School in North London.

Art UK and the PMC invite you to use the resources below as warm-up activities in preparation for supporting young people to write longer submissions for the Write on Art competition.

Each resource can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

The Colours Of...

The Colours Of... invites young people to pick a colour in their environment or in an artwork they are viewing. For example, this could be the colour of the chairs in their classroom or the colour of a person’s hat in a painting. Once they have chosen a colour, invite them to come up with a fantastical name for this colour in the style of a paint sample, such as “November Rain”, “Burnt Wine” or “Confetti Lizard”. Prompts to help those struggling can include asking them to think of things such as a type of weather, a time of year, an animal or a feeling and then combining them.

Once these fantastical names have been chosen, invite your group to write a short fictional description of the origin of this colour. Because the colour name is made up, the story about the creation and use of this colour can be made up too! Here are some questions to help shape these stories:

• Where do you imagine this colour first appeared? Did it just appear or was it made?
• How do you imagine this colour has been used historically?
• Does the colour make people feel a particular way? Does it represent anything?

We have included examples of colour origins alongside this resource to give you and your group some ideas.

Once your group have completed this activity you could bring all of their colours together in a colour chart and title them “Colours of [insert the name of your school or group]”, “Colours of [insert the name of the museum or gallery you are visiting]” or “Colours of [insert the name of the artwork being explored]”.

Spotlight On...

Spotlight On... invites young people to choose one artwork or object and build up to producing a short piece of writing from its perspective or from the perspective of its maker. They can choose an artwork or object online or from a book. A useful prompt to help them choose can be to ask them where they would like to shine a spotlight – what artwork or object do they think deserves attention?

This activity begins with a variety of questions that encourage the writer to look closely and think about the visual qualities, creation and historic use of their chosen artwork or object. These questions can be asked out loud and discussed within the group or answered individually on the worksheet. These initial questions are followed by further prompts depending on whether the young person is writing from the perspective of the artwork or object, or of its maker.

Curatorial Label

This activity puts young people in the shoes of a curator and invites them to think about how they would want to describe an artwork or object to members of the public. You can invite your group to take a variety of approaches:

• They could think of their label as a piece of creative writing and produce a short story or poem.
• They could focus on their personal reaction or feeling, sharing their response with the reader.
• They could focus on trying to find out more about the historic context of the piece.

This activity includes a variety of questions and sentence beginnings to help young people to get started or to add some structure to their writing.

You could print and display pictures of your group’s chosen artworks or objects and place their labels beneath them.

Golden Shovel

A Golden Shovel poem is a useful exercise for helping young people who may feel less confident in their writing. Invite the group to write one sentence or phrase about an artwork or object of their choice. The sentence can be simple and short, or longer and more elaborate. Once they have written their sentences, the group can use each word of the sentence as the final words of the lines of their poem. The worksheet breaks this process down step by step and provides prompts along the way.