BROADHEMPSTON PRIMARY SCHOOL
Broadhempston welcomed artist Bridget Arnold to work with the whole school on an ambitious project to celebrate the natural world by experiencing the magic of the cyanotype process ("sun printing"). Do look up this remarkable process.
The schools' aim was for children to "be creative and express themselves, producing pieces of art around the theme of nature to display round the school."
What a success!
Teacher Hannah Nicholson wrote:
"All the staff thought it was incredible to receive the funding and most importantly of all, the children had a fantastic creative experience. Thank you!"
The children clearly loved these very special workshops!
"My favourite part was to see how the two chemicals work together to make the green paper blue when exposed to the sun." - Madeline
"It was fascinating how detailed the plants looked and the way it worked on cloth and paper." - Eliza
"I was absolutely amazing watching the plants stop the chemicals working." - Maia"I was surprised at the speed it changed colour. Now I understand how it works and I am impressed at the chemical reaction." - Leo
"I had never done anything like it before I was amazed when I heard about the chemicals and I loved splashing and swishing the print in the water." - Sumner
SHALDON PRIMARY SCHOOL
Teacher Victoria Jones-Whyte is now a teacher at Shaldon School where, as a child, she was great friends with - and in the same class - as Helen Kirk! Victoria and Helen shared a strong interest in drama and it was no surprise to us to find that Victoria had chosen for her pupils to work with MED Theatre, developing their skills in drama and performance. The workshop was financially supported by The Helen Foundation. Victoria explains:
"The drama workshop focused on a story relevant to the local area of Shaldon-based on the The Earl of Totnes. A story that involves: a race on horses, a crashing sea, a feast, a devil and people being turned to stone, and includes locations very close to Shaldon such as Haccombe. Using this local story as inspiration, MED Theatre took the children on a journey of exploring the different elements within the story, and how to turn these into performance - the different characters, the plot and how to create a sense of the space were explored."
"The Shaldon School children had a fantastic day and thoroughly enjoyed working with MED Theatre developing their performance skills. It was wonderful to welcome theatre practitioners into school and to see the children working collaboratively."
IDE PRIMARY SCHOOL
Using their THF subsidy, Ide Primary School invited in artist Helen Plant to run a textiles workshop. The school wrote:
"Thank you very much to The Helen Foundation who very kindly organised to contract Helen Plant to come in and deliver a textiles workshop with Willow Class. Throughout the day the children worked together to create a collaborative piece of artwork to show the life cycle of a sunflower."
One of the pupils wrote afterwards:
"I really enjoyed the workshop because we learned new artistic skills such as stamping and sewing. I loved using the sewing machine because I've never used one before. We were really impressed with the final piece because it was really colourful and it looks good in our school. Thank you." - George
For thanks to Daisi for creating the contract seamlessly between the school, the artist Helen Plant, and The Helen Foundation.
GATEHOUSE PRIMARY SCHOOL
Year 4 at Gatehouse School, Dawlish took part in an inspiring Helen Foundation supported art workshop day with the contract once again facilitated by Daisi. Artist Jess Carvill led an art workshop based around the themes of positivity using one of Gatehouse's core values -“flourish”- to inspire the creation of a Big Felt which will be displayed in the school.
In the morning, focusing on the core value “flourish”, all pupils were given the opportunity to make an individual piece of brightly-coloured pre-felt with the aim of creating a colourful, positive and uplifting image of a summer wild meadow bursting into bloom. Each individual piece was transferred to the Big Felt and in the afternoon the children learned more about the felting process. They thoroughly enjoyed their hands-on experience of wetting and rolling the finished artwork to fuse all the individual pieces together.
The final piece was taken away for drying and we look forward to seeing their collaborative Big Felt when it returns to school finally finished at the end of term. What a fantastic day!