Tunnel of Wood

Like their younger cohorts, the Alrewas Guides and Scouts are well up for community art projects. Which is why, when British Waterways asked us to repair the sad-looking willow tunnel at Fradley Pond with help from members of the local community, we knew who to call.

Over two days we worked with Guides and Scouts to plant, tie, weave, and bodge all the willow we had to create a sturdy, lasting structure.

The children and adults all got a bit muddy and a little chilly, but fun was certainly had by all.

We're back in Fradley on Sunday 24th to finish it off, with the help of some more locals.

You're welcome to drop-in and join us at 10am-1pm or 2pm-4:30.

Wear gloves and lots of layers!

We Wish You A Merry Cubmas

Janet, the Alrewas Cubs leader contacted us asking for some giant outdoor festive Christmas building adornments: so we put our heads together and decided on baubles.

A trip to Argos to buy six space hoppers later, and we were ready to go.

It was all a bit manic as there were 30 Cubs and lots of paint in a slightly-too-small enclosed space, but they all did really well and the baubles looked excellent.

We left it to the Cubs to hang them up around the Scout Hut, as we reckoned that they'd be far better than us at tying knots.

Ooh and they also painted a Christmas message for passers-by.

I'm Loving Angels In...Crewe

A couple of weeks ago I went to Springfield Special School in Crewe to help some of the Juniors make some giant angels for their Christmas performances.
Here were the plans:

With my two wonderfully helpful helpers, we split the group in two and had them each work on a different angel. The children did all of the design work, then painted their designs onto large pieces of cloth.

They were happy painting away which left us to dish out paint and clean up the mess they made!

After a hard day's work the children went home and I attached the painted sheets to the pre-made frames, and popped a light inside each one to give them an ethereal glow.

Result: two big, colourful angels for Springfield School.

Where The Wild Things Are...in Nottingham

A few weeks ago we went to Fernwood Junior School to help them celebrate their ‘Community Day’. There seemed to be lots going on, but we barely had time to investigate as we were busy working with Year 5 to make four monstrous multicultural masterpieces!

We started with four local landmarks: the school, the war memorial, the park, and the library, then tasked the children with populating them with the most diverse community imaginable...a community where everyone is welcome regardless of how many legs, arms, eyes, or noses they have, or whether they are covered in fur, scales, or slime.

There were just 2 rules:

• No colouring in. All monsters must be drawn in black pen on white paper.
• Each monster had to feature 1 coloured detail, either the school logo, a poppy, a woolly hat or scarf, or a book, depending on which place they were stood outside.

The children took to it brilliantly, creating a multicultural community of hundreds of hilarious, happy monsters.

They even sent us a thank you card!

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!