Creative workshops for schools and community groups

The workshops can be adapted to suit any age group. It may be that the school has some ideas for art projects than can be incorporated into the workshops. I am extremely flexible and can usually produce a program to cater for the budget, time restraints and number of people involved.

(i.e. to accompany a particular curriculum topic or to produce an art feature for the school.)

Below is an outline of how a series of workshops could run. This is not typical of all the projects I do, but gives an idea of how a project could be structured.

Workshop 1 – Collecting ideas

Look at some of my work and work from other artists. Discuss where inspiration can come from and how artists get their ideas.

Introduce the children to various methods of collecting ideas for a piece of work. (photography, sketching, collecting materials and colour samples)

If the school has no specific project then I will introduce a topic for a piece of art on a particular theme.

Discuss how to put together ideas sheets from inspiration gathered. I shall show some of mine from previous commissions.

Set children the task of collecting their own inspiration and ideas for the next workshop.

Workshop 2 – Putting a design together

Go through the ideas sheets that the children have compiled.

Talk about simplifying designs by identifying basic shapes, colours and textures.

Discuss what materials are available to create their art work as this needs to be taken into consideration in the design process.

Help the children to create simple designs from their own ideas so that by the end of the workshop they will have a design for their own piece of art.

Workshop 3 – Techniques using the available materials

This would be a practice session to enable the children to explore the various materials available to them for the final piece. I can show them some of the techniques that I use in my own work and help them to finalise what techniques they will be using on the final piece.

Workshop 4 – Creating the final piece(s)

(This may need to be spread over more than one session, depending on the techniques that the children are using and the drying times of the separate stages of the painting.)

This would be a practical session to create the final design.

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If no particular project is suggested by the school, then the workshops could culminate in an exhibition of the children's artwork.