Murals from Sierra Leone

Springfield Junior School in Ipswich wanted four murals based on life in Sierra Leone. So after some consultation with the Head Teacher, and clear instructions to include a barracuda at any cost (he was a little obsessed!), I spent a weekend sketching these four mockups:

The school is twinned with a school in Sierra Leone. They are raising money for a well, and wanted something to reflect four aspects of life in the country: a shanty town, the school, a jungle replete with Sierra Leonean animals, and a tropical beach.

We worked with groups of four at a time. Slowly building up the background, midground, and foreground layers...

...before carefully working in the details.

In the end we worked with almost all of Y4, 5, and 6 over the five days. And I have to say that they did brilliantly.

The murals had a designated place in the Y6 corridor, so I got out the power tools and we stuck them up:

Here Come the Drums, Here Come the Drums...

Way back in August we went down to the Children's University in Bedford for a week of rainforest-themed drumming. It was a great week for all involved, the children were given opportunities to do art, journalism, paper making, drama and even hold a variety of slithery rainforest inhabitants!

Our sessions gave the children the chance to learn the basics on a variety of drums, mainly the African djembe. First we learned some basic types of hit, then moved into gradually more complex rhythms (with the threat of singing if they didn't play in time!).

The sessions concluded with the children listening to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Story: The Sing Song Tale of Old Man Kangaroo and being challenged to retell the story using their drums. In the final session, even the parents got involved!

Life in plastic, it's fantastic!

Finished on the 16th October, this project at Southfields Community Primary School in Coventry was our first foray into the complex and remarkable world of plastic casting.To show the kids the dangerous chemicals that we'd be using to cast their mini masterpieces we set up our lab outside.

Then we went into each class (R, Y1, Y2) and did some relief work and random Matisee-inspired-shape-cutting-out to produce the inserts that would go inside each of the 140 resin blocks.

With all of the inserts completed, and a design for a giant WELCOME to be embedded into the

blocks approved by head teacher Paul, the Big Art People holed up in the lab for the next few days to work their alchemical wonders.

The blocks were left to set, then placed in the ground and put to bed over the weekend whilst the

adhesive beneath them and the varnish on top of them, cured.

And here are the results (shown with the original plan)!

They're so shiny that it's difficult to do them justice in a photo. You'll just have to trust that they look brilliant when viewed with the naked eye!