In this blog, artist Louise Barrington talks about her recent workshops with North Walls Primary School.
Last year I received funding from Creative Scotland’s Youth Arts Fund Small Grants Scheme supported by the Pier Arts Centre to undertake creative workshops with North Walls Primary School on Hoy.
I have been researching and developing a project titled Four Seasons - making the invisible visible, looking at the aesthetic and environmental aspects on the landscape experienced over a calendar year on Orkney. I was delighted to be able to share ideas from this research with the students within my project Between Now and Tomorrow.
One of the recurring themes throughout the project has been taken from the writings of the Orcadian writer Edwin Muir who described his youth on Orkney as ‘A place where there was no great distinction between ordinary and fabulous.’ This wonderful quote inspired the students to think about their everyday ordinary/fabulous, they experience within the landscape as their playground.
Spring
Our first workshop took inspiration from renewable energies - looking at the invisible energy of wind. This intangible force can have a physical effect on us much like the intangibility of memories, when remembering sounds and scents of a place.
The pupils were asked to think of spring, and draw their memories of the landscape; colours; patterns; sounds; textures.. Then they created an artwork, which was used as the main component for a windsock, which responded to the wind improvising a performance together.
Summer
For our summer session we had a beautiful sunny day to head out to the nature trail gathering flora and fauna. We were conscious just to gather a little, and not to cause any harm to the ecosystem. Taking inspiration from George MacKay Brown’s book An Orkney Tapestry, the students thought about stories from the landscape and began to weave a living tapestry.
Autumn
As the landscape turns into a kaleidoscope of colours across Orkney, we again headed out into the nature trail at North Walls to gather materials. Back in the classroom students began sculpting the landscape, taking inspiration from Japanese Ikebana arrangements, carefully considering their materials to build a composition. Afterwards we used the leftover materials to preserve a landscape memory by using the flora and fauna to create cyanotypes.
Winter
Our winter session fell on the first week of COP26. The pupils were encouraged to think about the future of their landscape and what they would say to the world leaders meeting in Glasgow, writing their own manifesto for the future they want. Communicating ways of rethinking our steps to support the landscape. Finally, we made shadow puppets to tell their story of their everyday ordinary/fabulous.
Many thanks to the Pier Arts Centre for supporting this project, along with head teacher Shirley Stuart, all the staff at North Walls who have made me so welcome, and of course all the pupils who made my visit a real highlight of each season. It has been a wonderful opportunity to experiment with ideas, and very rewarding to listen to the North Walls pupil’s stories between now and tomorrow.