I drove up from Dublin to visit St Colman’s school to meet with Helena and the class who were so welcoming and friendly.  They had a lovely comfy chair waiting for me and the class sat on the carpeted floor around me on cushions. There was such a warm and calm atmosphere in the class and the rest of the school.We sat and chatted for quite a while. There were so many great curious questions about what was it like to be an artist and what kind of art and materials I liked best and what art and mediums they liked too. It was clear that there was lots of creativity in the class and many of the children have relations that are makers and artists, mostly younger than me we discovered when they established my age.  We looked at my website and the children picked the projects they wanted to hear more about. We took a group photo together to mark the occasion before I left. I think it really helped meeting the children  in person and experiencing their environment, I guess it felt friendlier, more human and open than just appearing larger than life on a screen.It was strange to think next time we would meet I would be far away still unsure about how this would actually work out. I brought up two coloured carpets that I had made as ‘portals’ to put infront of the white board screen where I would appear over the coming weeks. The coloured ‘portals’ are to stand on when talking to me on the screen. I liked the idea that in a way we could be physically meeting in virtual space and by calling them portals they were points where we could be transported to that meeting space.  Myself and Helena then spent some time planning for the coming weeks and talked about working within the thematics of the school topics for 2016/17, ‘What a waste’ and ‘mini Beasts’ as starting points for our project.  I was really impressed by how thoroughly the subjects were being explored through all subjects, there were some really great ideas already. Talking through what we could do we left the day excited about the potential of our project together.