Great to be back at King Edward IV Aston School for the annual Festival of Cultures – one of my workshop highlights of the calendar. During the day the students choose from a massive range of activities to participate in. Yoga, ballroom dancing and scrap sculpture to name just three. The event carries on into the evening with performances, family workshops and delicious food from around the globe. Man the curries are to die for! Looking forward to next year already.
Tag Archive for birmingham
Washwood pottery Zsar
I’ve been working closely with Washwood Heath Nursery School in Birmingham for a number of years now delivering sessions with the children, parents and staff. For the majority of the sessions I’ve had the pleasure to work alongside Rifatt who has been picking up pottery tips and gaining clay confidence as the sessions roll by. I was totally blown away by the quality of pots made by a group of parents at a pottery workshop she had independently planned and delivered. Nice one Rifatt!
Clay dust
The staff at Springfield Primary School in the West Midlands came up with an inspired solution to an age old problem of working with clay, children and a carpeted school!
The footwear was incredible easy to put on and did nothing to dampen the children’s creativity. All 430 children contributed to a marvellous collection of collaborative terracotta animals and birds. Classes were mixed up so that the younger children got to work alongside the older ones – all very harmonious.
Once the sculptures are out of the kiln we’ll photograph them and pop them up on line and eventually the work will be installed in various outside locations dotted around school.
Clay oven
Every once in a while I get to make a bread oven with a group or school. This year I collaborated with Brearley & Teviot Nursery school and Forest School Andy (resident outside practitioner) to produce an oven in one of their outside spaces. Andy built a fantastic base from paving bricks and concrete slabs and then I worked with the children and staff making squidgy bricks from clay, straw and sand. The children took great pleasure in forming the sloppy mix into brick shapes and assembling them around
the sand former. The masterpiece was ‘iced’ with numerous clay decorations
created by the youngsters.
Once thoroughly dry, the oven will have its inaugural firing at the Nursery’s Summer Celebration day where the whole community will get the opportunity to sample freshly baked bread hot from the oven.
How do we express ourselves?
This beautifully modelled ‘happy’ face was made by a young child at Washwood Heath Nursery School in Birmingham. I was particularly taken by the detail: Cheeks, moustache, beard and eye lashes were all carefully added or drawn into the clay slab.
The children and staff are exploring notions of the self and we chose to use clay to explore facial expressions and associated emotions.