Seven Summer Hats for a School in Slough

So much for a relaxing end of term! We spent the last week before the summer holidays at Marish Primary School in Slough, making headdresses with (almost) all of its 640 children.

Each year group needed something different to wear for the procession at their annual Dance Festival (called Let's Dance), so we put our heads together and came up with 7 designs for 7 workshops: Reception made some colourful Rainbows; Y1 a night sky with a big yellow Moon; Y2 made feathers for their Air themed hats; Y3 did some brilliant, tall Fire headdresses; Y4 made long, sharp blades of grass to represent Earth; Y5 echoed their Water theme with wispy strips of shiny film; and Y6 made some impressive firey Suns.

Getting through all of the classes in just 5 days was certainly a challenge! But we got it done, and the results of the project are brilliant. We've been promised some photos from the event, so I'll pop those up as soon as they arrive.

Many thanks to Lucy for helping us out on the Monday when I couldn't be there. You did us proud! Does that mean that you're officially the Third Big Art Person though? We'll have to wait and see...

The Big Cat People

The Big Art People have been at those pebbles again! This time we spent 6 glorious days at St. James' Junior School in the centre of Derby, working with ALL year groups to produce these, frankly wonderful looking, big cats:

The designs are based on the school's 4 houses: Panther, Tiger, Lion, and Ocelot. Tim sketched them back in the office:

At the school the pebbles were sorted into colours, and the the four big cats were laid out in sandboxes. They were then painstakingly transferred, pebble by pebble, onto the wall by us and the children:

It was a tricky project to get right, but everyone worked really hard and I think you'll agree that the results are fantastic!

Thanks to all of the children at staff at the school; and special thanks to Andrew Buckenham for his help and support.

Jim (Big Artist)

It's muraltastic!

Whitefriars Infant School in Northamptonshire needed their playground wall brightening up... so who did they call? The Big Art People of course.
We were asked to do a big bright mural along a minibeasts theme, so first we got the children to produce some designs, then took an element from each one to produce this mockup of the final piece:


Everyone was happy with the design so we packed up our paints and headed down to the school. We passed two very windy days painstakingly transferring the children's wonderful minibeasts onto the wall:


Everyone was really pleased with the final piece. It certainly brightens up the playground! And it's all the children's work.
Hopefully we'll be back at Whitefriars next school year to do another giant art project on the front of the school. Any ideas?!

Jim (Big Artist)