Resources

Give it Some Oomph! is a guide developed by Year 9 students from The Turing School (Nibble Bibble Duck Toes) and artist Richard Phoenix for young people to develop tools and tactics to support their engagement with contemporary art and gallery spaces.

This resource is designed to be printed on A3 or A4 and can be downloaded and printed for your visit. It can be used in any gallery or arts space. The resource is intended to be used as a whole but you can use individual pages or themes for your visit.

Find out more on the Give It Some Oomph! project page.

Give it Some Oomph!: Secondary and Higher Education

(designed by and for Year 9 Students)

Give it Some Oomph!: Primary

(A reworked version of the resource above for a younger group)

Give it Some Oomph!: Teachers' Resource

(Activities designed for the classroom or at home)

Feedback from Professor Ben Burbridge, Head of Art History, University of Sussex (September, 2023):

The resource is absolutely amazing; truly among the most imaginative and interesting examples of this sort of work I have come across in my 20 years working in the arts. The things I particularly like about it are:

• - It is irreverent in a really productive way: it takes art seriously, but it refuses to be intimidated by galleries or by art. Instead it asks really interesting questions about how people behave in galleries and why they behave that way and why people respond to art in the ways that they do. 

• - I love the focus on ‘energy’ rather than quality or even ‘meaning’ (in a traditional curator’s text panel sort of way). Instead of approaching art as a secret language that only a few people can speak you encourage and nurture curiosity. 

• - I love that you have worked as a collective of young people.

• - A lot of traditional interpretation works according to a ‘deficit’ model; it assumes that people who are maybe uncertain about what to do in galleries are somehow lacking in something and it is the role of the gallery to teach them how to think and behave ‘properly’. You completely flip that model on its head in a way that feels necessary and playful and exciting. Thank you!