I have just wrapped up a painting phase with Children in Glanworth – creating signs to celebrate the bio-diversity of the beautiful River Funcheon. We walked the banks in May and gathered information about what we found, we sat on the banks and made drawings from our memory of the walk using botanical inks we talked to local ecologist Fiona about the species we found. back in the classroom 4th and 5th class students worked with their teacher Stephen researching online and creating drawings about their favourite species. I visited the classroom and we mocked up some boards with a collage of images we wanted and we began placing our drawings on the boards, getting a feel for what story each of the 4 boards should tell. The story is in shapes and connections and colour and inter-related lifeforms, and what we know about the history of the place. We had to have an ash leaf to represent our river by name. We had to have the bridge with the 13 arches and the mill wheel , we had to have our nightlife in bats and our nesting swan, our flying creatures and insects, we wanted the boards to show how each creature and plant is dependent on another, local carpenter Richie cut the boards to the shapes we wanted.
julforrester 