Creating art from scrap

The session was delivered by special guest Sam Griffiths of Griffics as part of @BarkingCollege photography department’s weekly sessions by top creatives.

Sam Griffiths has a background as a designer, having worked in branding for 20 years. About three years ago, he started doing more personal work and wanted to explore ways to play and be playful. He now spends two days a week creating and selling his own works of art via his website.

Sam explains: “I’m a strong advocate for play and, after a while, I wanted to start sharing that with people through interactive workshops. Play makes life much richer and more fun.”

He says that play really helps in life, including with work; for example, with idea generation, collaboration and relationships.

The workshop involved playful activities for students based on observation. The idea was to look at things extremely closely and find potential in them and create something unique. One of the exercises involved them having a brief to find a scrap off the street, ideally something abstract, and then make their own drawing in which they used the scrap.

Sam says: “The students created really interesting and varied responses to the exercise. It was a really fun session.”

Two of the students, Gloria Mezzanotte and Rezija Samoska were commissioned by Sam earlier this year to photography all his artworks for his new website: https://www.griffics.com/