For our final session with our artist Joe Coveney, Joe made the long journey from Dublin to Cabragh, Co Tyrone.

Joe came up with the idea of concluding our project on ‘interconnectedness’ by creating life size sculptures using bamboo sticks in small groups and then joining these together into one large piece. It was a big challenge but the class were up with it!

We began the session by discussing the positive and negative points of the online lessons with Joe. We then moved onto discussing how we were going to make a sculpture with sticks, like we have been doing in previous weeks, except this time we would be making much larger ones with bamboo sticks. We discussed the possible difficulties that may arise from it and how we were going to make the joints. Masking tape was the best option we had so each group started practicing making simple joints with a few sticks.

Soon the children were beginning to form ideas of how they wanted their structure to look like. Luckily we had a spare classroom next door to ours so there was lots of space available for the 5 groups.

An hour late, each group had created some brilliant sculptures. After the break we then looked at each other’s creation and then discussed how we could pair up some of each groups scultpure and make it into a larger one….. this was lots of fun and it required lots of thinking and work from the children but I think the final pieces speak for themselves. Joe and I were delighted and amazed with what they achieved.

Unfortunately after the children spent a couple of hours building their sculptures, they all had to come down again. The children really enjoyed this different form of Art and Design that they have been studying the past 3 months and, along with myself, they have gained a lot from this experience. Thanks to Joe for his time and hard work throughout the project and Ruth for all her assistance….. below are some photos from the day.

Mr Mc Anespie