Pigeon Art Workshops

It’s taken a while but we have finally laid this floor mosaic for the children to walk and play on and perhaps even to sit on when the sun shines.  It looks just beautiful, overlooking the Peterhead Lighthouse which is also illustrated by the children in the mosaic. You can just see the lighthouse in the background of the bottom picture (top-left). The children designed and then created in mosaic a picture which we then cast into paving blocks for them.

Parents and teachers helped to work on the mosaic and the council landscaping department volunteered some of their team to build the platform to lay it on.  Lots of people were involved in creating an eye-catching piece of art, which will hopefully become a local feature if the school goes on to build a garden feature around it.

We are coming to the end now of our work in Peterhead in Scotland which was thought up and set rolling by Tracy MacLeod, the Active Schools Co-coordinator.  Just a couple more weeks and the last projects will be in place and the final tweaking done, the last few photographs up to show you.

It will have been a pleasure and an unusual opportunity to have worked with a whole network of schools on one project (a ‘network’ of schools is the equivalent of the English schools ‘cluster’ of schools).  The hope is that the schools will use these projects as a starting point and be inspired to take the work further by adding to it.  Two schools are hoping to use the work as the beginning of a garden feature.  Two schools have talked about adding to the work with more or similar works for their playgrounds.  All the schools will hopefully have talked about each others’ projects and ideas when the Headteachers get together for their network meetings.  When we round off with a final sharing of the work across the schools the children and teachers should also have the opportunity to see what all of the other schools have done.

To take the idea of Health Education that extra mile and look at the mental health of children in the context of their play environment and their contributions to it has been an inspired idea and one that we hope to be involved in again in the future.

Oldfleet school are having an exciting project in February.  The school is planning a topic with ‘A Day in India’ as their theme and we will be making a life-size Indian elephant with them from willow and covering it with some exciting artwork.  It’s always good to work with a school that has a sense of adventure!  Pictures to follow.

In 2008 Mile End School in Aberdeen had an eight day batik workshop with all of the staff and children.  The school will be leaving their current building after a hundred years or so in the summer of 2009. We are making a book of memories with them to take to their new building, and the children and staff have written their memories onto their artworks.   These will be exhibited in the school before it closes and then be taken away again to be turned into a huge fabric book that will be there for years to come as a reminder of the history of the school – a snapshot in time, including recollections, poetry and a little bit of something from everyone all the way down to the nursery.  Later in the year we will include pictures of the exhibition and then of the finished book.