Waste materials

Big Red Art workshop at Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds

| Rojo Art

A speedy art activity for under fives between performances of The Big Red Bath at the Theatre Royal. We brought along a multitude of red materials and a vast quantity of red dough and invited the children to create a small red creature that might live in the big red bath. Bubble wrap was a great substitute for bath water and someone even added shower fittings to their creation.

We really enjoyed running this activity which felt process driven, visually appealing and really easy for the children to engage in, with or without their parents.

Forest Academy, Brandon

| Rojo Art

This was a day long project working with years 3 and 4. The children had been studying mini-beasts and we were asked to work with them to create giant mini beasts from recycled plastics with emphasis on a scientific approach. We decided to split the day into three processes: sculpting the bodies from plastic fencing, creating an exoskeleton and wings from flat plastics sealed into stickyback plastic and finally threading cut bottles and bottletops to make flowers and legs. The children worked in teams throughout the day making joint decisions on design and mirroring activity to achieve symmetry. At the end of the day the very helpful caretaker managing to install the huge mini beasts high onto the wall. Here are some photos that don’t really do justice to the children’s work. Hopefully we’ll get some better ones soon.

Giant minibeasts from recycled plastics at Forest academy

After school art: plant stories

| Rojo Art

For our last session this term we explored the idea of creating a narrative from the idea of the plants the children had created just keeping on growing.

First of all we had a 10 min session sharing ways to use charcoal. The children then set up their plants within a white box like a stage set and added a few more props to create a story. Using torches they looked at ways they could light the scenes in the most dramatic way.

With the lights off they used charcoal to draw their dramatic scenes-in retrospect I think this would have been fun photographed or filmed so maybe next time…. The children then decided to share their stories with the rest of the group. I’m really enjoying the fact that even the youngest members enjoy standing up in the group and talking about their artwork

Sorry no photos as it was rather dark and we were rather rushed but here are some photos of the children’s plant laboratory.

Art after school: plant stories

| Rojo Art

Our four week project imagines the type of plant that might grow from discarded plastic bottles. This week the children tried different ideas and techniques to transform the plastics into plant like shapes.

Here are some work in progress. Next week we will be thinking about how scientists classify new species of plants and the care that our new plants may need.

Wetheringsett Primary School: Plant scientists for the day

| Rojo Art

Wetheringsett School invited us to work with the whole school as part of their eco week. They were keen to create a shared large piece of art to be exhibited in the school. Before the project we agreed that the theme would be about an imaginary plant that might grow from discarded plastic bottles as they start to decompose.

The children collected sacks of plastic bottles and more Christmas sweet wrappers than we’ve ever seen gathered together in one place before, there’s something very beautiful and tactile about them en masse.

After an assembly introducing the theme the children took part in three activities. We worked with them exploring ways to transform the plastic materials into component parts of a large plant installation for the library area. The children discovered some ways of transforming the plastic bottles that we hadn’t seen used before.

Alongside this we asked the teachers to set up a large scale shared drawing allowing the children to imagine plants that might grow from the plastics. In another activity they put themselves in the position of scientists classifying the newly discovered plant and determining it’s growing needs and habits linking back into growth as a curriculum topic.

Here are a few photos of the artwork assembled in the library;

Art day at Weatheringsett Primary school imagining what would happen if throwaway plastics took root-the plant lab.