Volunteering at a Primary School!

(11/02/09) My friend's mum (Ann) works at a Primary school within Liverpool and she had seen my art work during the exhibition of my foundation course last year. She saw that I had created installations and wondered if I would like to help out with art projects that will be take place within the school.

Today I went to visit the school and find out more about the projects that will be taking place. Ann gave me a tour around the school during the morning and she explained the art projects that have been planned during the year.

I saw areas of the class room that had already been changed to stimulate enthusiasm and excitement towards learning. For example the book corner had been adapted to encourage child to enjoy that area: it had been turned into an indoor woodland area with a large branch in the corner of the room, material drapped from the ceiling and laied up on the table, within numerous soft toy woodland animals, fairy figures, wooden objects placed on top. This made the area more interesting and the fact that it was interactive and asetheticaly appealing meant that children looked forward to being in that place. In the afternoon I helped within the classroom with the chidren's reading and arts and crafts.

The following art related activities that I can get involved with are as follows:

1. Garden flower show-creating the arch way out of various materials-not just natural!


2. Indoor den/cave-creating an indoor interactive area!


3. General art lessons-painting, being creative, (like yesterday helping the children when they were making robots/rockets).


4. Story sacks (choosing a story and creating a game, objects-probs, cue cards, instructions within a sack that can be used to reanact that story)-e.g Neil Griffiths.

Ann said that I could bascially get involved with as little or as much as I would like. I would really like to go and help with the art projects within the future. At the moment I would only have time to be involved with one off projects such as the garden flower show. However I have the chance to find a placement for the 2nd year during the Interactive Arts course and Ann said that I am am more than welcome to it at th school. I could then get involved with the projects more and spend longer there. This is something that I am going to look into doing as being there yesterday was such a fantastic experience!

In the future I would like to be a Primary school teacher so to be at a place that links in my future ambition and my ongoing enthusiasm towards art is spectacular!!! It also shows how within the future if I was to become a Primary school teacher there are opportunities to use my creative and artistic skills within the classroom/school aswell as doing my own individual art projects outside of the teaching environment!