The children in the senior room have participated in the CraftEd programme this year, working with local artist Kim Sharkey.
CRAFTed is a nationwide, primary level programme, which supports the delivery of the visual arts curriculum. CRAFTed works with teachers, craftspeople and students. The programme aims to provide all those engage with it with skills for life through positive, collaborative engagement. CRAFTed is a process led programme which focuses on creativity. The programme supports the wider aims of the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland by placing value on the skills of Irish makers, promoting the insightful and innovative contributions they have to offer to the development of art, craft and design education.
The chosen medium for the programme in our school was clay. The children worked with Kim to produce pieces that reflected different aspects of life in Ireland, including sport, culture, food and wildlife. They worked in groups to design and create clay sculptures featuring different symbols and figures that represented their chosen theme. The students also had a chance to throw pots using a pottery wheel, which they subsequently decorated and glazed.
Having been fired in the kiln it was time to view the finished products. The clay masterpieces formed part of the CraftEd Exhibition in the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny.
The exhibition included a presentation by the students explaining the background to their project and the various processes used in carrying their concepts to completion. The central piece of the presentation was a video that the Kim helped the children to produce. The children spent a day learning about computer animation and wrote the voice over pieces to go with the visual display. You can watch their video by pasting the following link into your browser seachbar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANHkKtgs11s
