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Local Schools Art
Initiatives
Linked events at Banchory Academy & Community
Education Centre, Scolty Centre, Woodend Barn, Banchory town
This is a three-month project based in Banchory, using visual art to explore
attitudes to and management of the waste we produce, raising questions about
the sustainability of aspects of our current lifestyles.
The project will culminate into a 10-day exhibition. The theme
is “What a load of rubbish”. The artist working on the project
hopes to help a group of young people research and develop visual artworks.
The choice of media and content will be very much left to the young people.
The aim of the project is to produce 2D pieces to be placed in the notice
boards which are located along the corridors of the academy building,
install a sculptural work and produce a piece of performance art to be shown
live or on video.
The project will also take young people to a landfill site in Banchory
and will be looking at the following issues:
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Why do we have so much rubbish |
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What happens to the rubbish |
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How do we choose what to throw away
and what to keep |
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How do we feel about the litter
problem |
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Look at how other artists have
tackled some of these themes in their work |
St Kieran’s Primary School, Campbeltown
Una Colvin, Community Education
Worker with New Community Schools in Campbeltown, has worked and has had
direct influence from the pupils at St Kieran’s primary school (special
education) and with the younger community at Campbeltown. All
pupils have had empowerment and active citizenship over their projects,
which are reported below.
The Harbour Light Youth Festival
St Kieran’s Primary School in July ’03 held ‘The Harbour Light Youth
Festival’ which was to represent a beacon guiding young people to the
festival giving them the opportunity to express their ideas and raise issues
about Campbeltown through a variety of creative mediums which included spray
art, community drama, song writing DJ missing and sampling as well as
percussion and drumming.
Scotland Against Drugs, South Kintyre New Community Schools, funded the
Youth Festival, Kintyre Substance Misuse Forum as we all money raised by the
Alternative Music Project.
The ethos behind the festival was to provide a safe drug and alcohol free
environment in which young people can be informed and encouraged to make
more positive life choices.
The Environmental Task Force prepared the walls in St Kieran’s Primary
School bike sheds for the Spray Art and all the young people were given the
opportunity to express themselves through this medium, one of the walls
expressed their thoughts and visions and the other mural depicted the
alphabet and a variety of cartoon characters.
The Finale of the festival was a live performance, which was held in the
Community Centre. The music, songs, drama, DJ mixing and
sampling were all original material which had been developed over the three
days of the festival.
The feedback from those who attended the performance was very positive
“it was fab last night and I really enjoyed it….it was great to see the
kids at their best-I was really impressed”
“its great for the young people to have something for them to do during the
holidays”
Some of the comments given by the pupils were
“Scratching mixing-its cool” “spray art-It kicks ass!” “Congrats 2 every 1 &
a big tanx 2 all da facilitators!”
Gergask Primary School, Laggan
has been involved in the following art projects: Contributed to a village
wall mural to mark the millennium.
1. Another product of international working with France and
Sweden - pupil’s researched flora and fauna of their local forests - created
artwork then collated these using a scanner to produce an alphabetical
forest frieze representing Scottish, French and Swedish forest life. This is
displayed in the village hall.
This summer our pupils designed a mural and painted it onto the interior
walls of Laggan's public toilet!!
2. We are now planning to create interpretive boards for local
forest walks depicting wildlife.
3. 'Story of a Horse' book made in conjunction with pen pals in
France and Sweden following a study of working horses. This
transnational project was supported by Moray, Badenoch and Strathspey
Enterprise and pupils from France Sweden and Scotland, who worked together
within the European LEADER programme, on the ‘Working Horses in the 21st
century” project
The projects aims were to
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Exchange ideas amongst professionals
who work with heavy horses |
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Connect International schools
project with the subject of working horses |
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Exchange of ideas amongst relevant
agencies and institutions |
Sandbank Primary School 2003/04
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Annual Whole School Art Show |
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Art entries to Health Departments
re. ‘A Stroke Week’ |
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Art Work associated with ECO Schools
Project |
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Out of Hours Art Club, 5 sessions
run by Local Artists negotiated by FUSIONS Integration Manager |
Acharacle Primary School in Ardnamurchan.
As a school they maintain links
with our local Feis organisation throughout the year. Tutors
deliver instrumental tuition to pupils individually and/or in groups
throughout the term. It gives pupils an opportunity to provide
music when we no longer have a visiting teacher of music in schools.
Last year all the schools in the Peninsula were involved in a project called
"Natural Rhythms". The project was organised by the Ardnamurchan
Youth Music group and it linked expressive arts and environmental studies.
It was very successful and the final concert was a complete sell out.
Totem Pole - North Sutherland Community Forest
Tin Smithing - linked with a George Gunn play
Strathnaver Trail - Pupils produced T-shirts with designs inspired
from a three-day study of the various geographical and historic aspects of
the trail.
Wick High School
Wick swimming pool (café screens)
Waterlines exhibition
Coastal Interpretations panel
Northlands “Assipattle” community Theatre
Past, Present, Future” Pultney Town Project
Tarbert Academy
NOF funded workshops have
supported departmental work in the Art and Music departments.
With NOF they have been able to put on workshops on a Saturday using the
school facilities. Music students have taken part in two
separate guitar workshops and Art students have taken part in cartoon
drawing, pot throwing, and this year model making. NOF funding
has also allowed them to take two groups of pupils to Edinburgh to visit
exhibitions, attend a musical show and various museums.
Aberdeen City Council Anti-Vandalism
Competion
Sixty first and second year art &
design pupils who entered the competition. All sixty entries were exhibited
in both the Arts Centre and Summerhill Education Centre in June Alan’s
design was computer generated and promoted a positive image of Aberdeen as a
city to live in.
Peacock Visual Arts Summer Workshop
Five senior girls all
participated in a 3-day summer project at Peacock Visual Arts in the
Castlegate. This gave them a chance to work directly with 2
artists – Wendy McMurdo and Ellie Lamb in creating their own artwork using
photography, digital manipulation (amazing weird effects on computer) and
printing in Peacocks workshop and studio.
Comments
“I thought it was a great experience and I learned a new aspect of art
which was extremely exciting. I would definitely go back!” (Margaret Lesiuk)
“I really enjoyed it and especially liked taking photos of the animals at
the zoology museum.” (Charlene Hutton)
Lunnasting Primary School, Shetland
ECO Schools programme with a strong focus on citizenship. One of the first
schools to attain this award with permanent status. Lunnasting
also have their own generator to provide some of its power.
One pupil attended the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
A special Art Trail was developed to celebrate the Millennium and local
artists worked with the children. They made excellent sculptures
in the school grounds and the children did most of the work.
Pupils use the school grounds to grow tatties and published their own tattie
recipe book in aid of a school in Zambia, raising £1110 and a local U.S.O.
volunteer was able to do a lot of work with the money. All the children
collected recipes and did the art work. Some of them sold the recipe book at
the local farmers market.
Shelibost School
Shelibost is a small rural school
with 11 pupils. In 2001-2002 they were involved in a research
project where a PHD student carried out workshops with the pupils to
identify their perceptions of land. That session we also
participated in an arts project organised by an arts officer based at An
Lanntair, Stornoway. The pupils initially attended an exhibition
as part of the "Wish I was Here" Project. A photographic/video
artist then visited the school and helped us to produce a video of negative
images.
Lanntair
Lanntair is an arts centre, which has produced many educational
arts-based projects and outreach education work. Below is just
one example of the very fine work produced by Lanntair in conjunction with
the local schools. To find out more information on the work that
Lanntair does, please visit their website at
www.lanntair.com),
where you will see a much more visual description and many more examples of
the kind of work described below. It’s well worth a visit.
In October/November 2001. An Lanntair co-ordinated an education
programme for eleven schools in Lewis and Harris, which centred on the
exhibition ‘Wish I Was Here’,; a series of photographic and video portraits
of poets from mixed cultural and linguistic backgrounds made by six artists.
Nine teachers came to the gallery to hear artists discuss their own approach
to making the portraits and their work. The teachers went on to
explore the use of an instant snapshot camera and medium format camera to
make photographic images.
A total of 162 pupils were given a tour of the exhibition, looking in detail
at the ideas behind the work and the varied photographic and video
techniques used by the artists. Pupils were then encouraged to
express themselves through poetry. These focused on their likes
and dislikes, their feelings about island life and their thoughts on Gaelic
culture.
Workshops in Schools
The artists visited the schools to carry out follow-up workshops with a
total of 150 pupils. Pupils worked on the idea of
self-portraiture and drew inspiration from their poems to create imagery in
a broad range of photographic and digital media.
Gaelic Language
As part of An Lanntair's ongoing commitment to promote contemporary
Gaelic culture, the exhibition tours, poetry and visual art workshops were
conducted primarily in Gaelic in the Gaelic medium schools.
Exhibition
An exhibition ‘Young Lives’ ran after the workshops
South Lanarkshire Self Image Summer Dance
Projects
In 2002 over 200 young people
took part in 8 summer dance projects in Blantyre, East Kilbride, Rutherglen
ad Biggar. In July 2003, places will be available for up to 400
participants, aged 11 - 14, from schools throughout South Lanarkshire.
The projects are funded through the New Opportunities Fund and supported by
Careers Scotland and South Lanarkshire Council. Places were
free.
YDANCE
YDance Projects
YDance operates all year round –it is not just in school term time.
In the summer break, YDance offers weeklong performance projects in
different parts of the country. Projects can be organised in
association with Local authorities, theatres or other agencies.
Moray Summer Dance Project
14th - 18th July 2003
A weeklong dance project for 8 - 11 year olds (half days) and 12 - 21 year
olds (full days) will be held in Keith, Moray in July 2003.
Following on from the successful projects in Buckie in 2001 and Fochabers in
2002, YDance tutors will lead a week of workshops and rehearsals in
different dance styles leading to a performance of a new work on the final
evening.
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