Installation Day - Priory Lower School

A day of wonderful weather made the installation of the Illuminate mural at Priory Lower School a delight and a pleasure. We said a fond farewell to the old, tired Thomas mural and began lining the boards up in order along the perimeter fence.

Ivor Hind, Michael Miles and Andrew Rushton formed the hanging team whilst Paula Wakeling, Sheila Hind and I nailed and painted quadrant beading and gave the mural another coat of anti vandal varnish.

We finished just as parents were coming to collect their children and were delighted to see their smiles and waves of approval. This group pointed out their portraits to me as I took their photo.

You can read about how the mural was made here

Illuminate - The Community Mural

As part of Priory Lower School's Arts Council Funded Illuminate project we held a community day where parents and children could come and add their portrait to the mural for the Reception play area. Initially the plan was to paint straight onto the fence but the arrival of more snow on the Monday morning meant it would be impossible for the primer to dry. Illuminate's amazing Project Coordinator, Paula Wakeling managed to source and have delivered, 14 marine ply boards and the afternoon was spent cutting and priming them ready for the following morning.

Michael Miles cutting the boards to size

Ivor and Sheila Hind priming

The day started quite quietly, mid-morning MP Richard Fuller came and joined the children for a spot of painting. By the afternoon we were almost overwhelmed with the amount of visitors and after school all the members of staff came to add their portraits instead of having a staff meeting. There were many intense conversations about hair colour and lip shape, plus the complexity of getting the nose looking nose-like and many wails of "Carole, can you just....."! 

Having worked on community projects for many years now drop-in sessions are not my favourite, it's hard to meet, greet and inform all the waves of new arrivals and chaos can ensue, 

by the end of the day parts of the mural were looking a bit disorderly and it was clear we would need more than a day to get the project finished.

Thankfully we were given more time to bring all the panels together

by mid-morning the next day Mrs Youngman was overheard saying 

" I see Carole's been working her magic!"

By Thursday all the panels had been painted and many people had been involved, there was a lovely energy coming from staff, pupils and parents, the children were so proud of their work and the Reception teacher kept coming back to check on our progress "I love! I just love it!"

Can you spot me with my wonderful mural painting Ninja's aka Mr and Mrs Hind who most definitely earned their paint brush wings. So many people gave so much help and their spirit illuminated a very cold, grey week! We will be installing the panels, weather permitting, soon and there will be a celebration of the whole Illuminate project in May.

Paper Jewellery

My first project of the year at Priory Lower School was to look at jewellery, whilst doing my research I remembered I had a book of Paper Jewellery by Wendy Ramshaw and David Watkins.

Paper jewellery has a long tradition which continues into the present day

The image above becomes a paper bangle and was used at Jazz Age Bridge Parties!

Wendy Ramshaw studied illustration and fashion design and in the 1960's created kit form paper jewellery with strong graphic motifs

I was also inspired by her Room of Dreams which combines jewels and traditional tales, her work is breathtakingly meticulous and some of her designs have been translated into architectural features. I felt that her book would offer a great way to explore jewellery with Year Two, especially as there was lots of scope for pattern making and use of colour.

Bracelets

and decorative collars

The following session we continued to work with paper, this time Zoffany wallpapers from an old sample book, creating flower forms which were applied to shapes dictated by the patterns in the wallpapers.

The children made collars and headdresses

adding drawn and applied embellishments

Later the children drew heads

to display their work