By Sheila Ceccarelli

Do you ever feel as a creative facilitator you, yourself need to be filled, and that teaching just can’t go on until your batteries have been recharged and creative spirit reenergised? 

That’s how I was feeling last Tuesday, before my Experimental Drawing Class, so decided, after seeing a friend’s posting on Facebook about forest bluebells in bloom, that instead of spending my morning planning indoors, I’d go out for a walk and find some inspiration for my students and myself outside.

The bluebell forest was overwhelmingly beautiful and I did feel inspired, though I still did not know how that would translate back in the studio with my students.

I have a class full of builders who love to construct, and enjoy working big, so remembering some black sugar paper and work by Rebecca Hoyes, I set students the challenge of transforming the studio into their own bluebell forest.

This was a quick and energetic session whereby teenagers transformed the studio into a forest in just an hour!

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AccessArt is a UK Charity and we believe everyone has the right to be creative. AccessArt provides inspiration to help us all reach our creative potential.

Arts and Minds: Time to Introduce Ourselves – A Sculpture Challenge

Arts and Minds: A ‘Heart-Work’ Conversation

Arts and Minds: Asemic Writing and Invented Text

Feeling Through Drawing

Drawing for Mindfulness

Arts and Minds: Expressive Monoprinting on a Big Scale

Constructing the World with Collage

Building to the Limit

Manipulating Clay with Water

Arts and Minds: Time to Introduce Ourselves – A Sculpture Challenge

We kicked off the programme with a quick making challenge which would act as an ice-breaker and introduce students to an array of materials.

Arts and Minds: Asemic Writing and Invented Text

Students were given the opportunity to further explore expressive mark making as a tool for self-expression and a vehicle for communication.

Arts and Minds: Expressive Monoprinting on a Big Scale

Students enjoyed monoprinting on a large scale by rolling printing ink and acrylic paint directly onto the table and experimenting with ways to take prints.

Constructing the World with Collage

Students were invited to use their previously created monoprints to construct large scale collages inspired by the landscape surrounding the college.

Manipulating Clay with Water

In this session teenagers had an abundance of clay and the freedom to play and manipulate form.

With Special Thanks To:

And to Pink Pig sketchbooks for their continued support of AccessArt and providing young people with beautiful books for this project.

Building to the Limit

In this session students were given the challenge of making building blocks out of mixed media and using them to build a sculpture. They were encouraged to experiment with balancing different elements together and setting themselves the challenge of seeing how far they could build before their constructions collapsed.

Drawing for Mindfulness

Students were guided on drawing exercises designed to explore drawing as a tool for seeing and being in the here and now.

Feeling Through Drawing

Students were led on a guided drawing experience of drawing through touch.

Arts and Minds: A ‘Heart-Work’ Conversation

Teenagers were introduced to graphite, charcoal, masking tape and acrylic paint as mediums for communal expressive mark making. A collective drawing was produced, whereby students were encouraged to work in collaboration and in response to each other.

UK Charity AccessArt welcomes artists, educators, teachers and parents both in the UK and overseas.

We believe everyone has the right to be creative and by working together and sharing ideas we can enable everyone to reach their creative potential.

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