Stanecastle and HAC

Stanecastle School and HAC workshops wed 31/1/07

Stanecastle

Maria and I arrived at the school at around 9.40 in time to meet Mags (drama worker) and get set up for the first of the two workshops.
The first workshop was with a class of six children, aged 10 and 11. With this group, Maria introduced me as a new helper, then showed the children the shapes they had marbled the week before whilst explaining that we were going to turn these into costumes in the near future.
Mags then took over and asked the children toile down on the floor and then pretend that they were fish. They had to curl up under their rocks. Mags put on some gentle calming music and then asked the children to begin to wake up as fish, stretch and gently begin to look around- make sure there were no predators or scary fish. Once they had done that they were to get up and start swimming around as little fishes. The group joined in eagerly and swam around the room for several minutes.
The next section involved getting a fish on a big long pole and swimming together as a school, following one child each time and trying to stick together. The general good behaviour of the class meant that this worked well and there were no injuries.
The last section involved creating little pieces of costume from the material the children had created the week before. They made head bands and bracelets with fishy creatures attached. Once they were suitably attired we lay some blue material on the ground and the children pretended they were on the seabed. Several of the more vicious sharks attacked me, as did a killer starfish and several octopi. This resulted, sadly, in a slightly melodramatic death on my part. Maria had an extra piece of blue material and took to waving it across the group to encourage them that it was the fishy bed time. Once the children were settled, the session ended and everyone went for a break time.

The second workshop was after break time, and again it consisted of six children, as the seventh child was not in school that day.
With this group we had a short discussion at the start about their class theme- which is Pirates. (This discussion may have been influential in deciding the direction of the other sessions…) Maria then showed the class the little pieces of costume the last class had created from all their work.
As with the first group, Mags ran through the first two exercises, with varied success, there was one child who wasn’t really interested in joining in, but we included him as much as possible.
The group then put on some of the costume pieces and lay on the floor, as sleeping fish while Maria created a sea effect over them with some transparent shiny cellophane type material. This group really enjoyed that and were keen to play on, however the time was up after that.

The clear up for this group was simple and we were soon back in the car, heading for lunch.
Maria and I had a few hours to kill before the next workshop, so we had thought about going to the library to find some sea books, especially about seaweed, however once we found the library, discovered it was shut on a Wednesday. Instead we spent more time on the beach collecting seaweed samples to show the group…

HAC

At around 3.40 Maria and I arrived at the Harbour Arts Centre (HAC) where Jenny (a felt-making expert) was all set up and ready to begin the workshops. Julia, who is the usual tutor for “Slap Happy Art”, the art workshops run in the HAC, joined us for these workshops. Unfortunately, she seemed a bit confused as to the fact that we were running six or eight weeks of felt-making workshops, and was worried the parents didn’t know what they were signing up for. However, all the kids loved it.

The felt making ran for an hour and was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Jenny and Maria started by showing the children the pieces of seaweed we had collected and getting them to feel the texture and shapes in it. Jenny went on to explain the materials we would be using and the process.
Jenny created her seaweed by laying bits of wool tops (the wool used) on her piece of bubble wrap, layering it up and the sprinkling water all over. The water was warm and mixed with some washing liquid to make it soapy. Once the design was wet and the air had been squeezed out, Jenny covered it with more bubble wrap and then rolled it up and push-rolled it hard to get the felting process going. She did this from both ends, rolling and pushing thirty times each way. Once this was done, the felt was removed from the bubble warp and rolled up in a cane roller blind. The same thing happened as with the bubble wrap. After that she kneaded it to get all the bubbles out. The children all had a go and created some really nice pieces of seaweed felt that, once they are dry will become part of the installation in the HAC.
Before the end, jenny demonstrated how to catch things in the fibres of the felt and the group each started another piece of felt, to be finished next week…

This group ran really well, seven children attended, which was a good number as there wasn’t really room for many more.