In this blog, Orkney artist Laura Drever talks about a series of workshops she delivered to Upside Down's Orkney. The project took place with support from the Pier Arts Centre through Creative Scotland Youth Arts Fund Small Grants Scheme.
Over the winter months I have been delivering weekend art classes to Upside Down's Orkney.
The purpose of the workshops were to engage young people, who's lives are touched by Down's Syndrome, in cultural and artistic activity. The group included young people aged from 3 -19 years old alongside parents and carers aged 10-60+. Each session was carefully designed and delivered to involve everyone, in a safe and secure environment and to encourage creativity and mindfulness.
The ten sessions included instruction on how to mix colour, drawing exercises, introduction of new materials, application of paint and how to think creatively about Orkney’s Landscape.
During the first session the group identified parts of the landscape that we see in Orkney - Sea, Hills, Sky, Horizon and thought about how we might use colour and line to recreate these. By making a variety of art materials available and simple instructions, allowed for a language of marks to appear. Some of the activities delivered included:
Still life using natural objects
I encouraged everyone to pick a couple of found natural objects including seaweed, shells, stones, grasses and to draw representational images of them.
Rubbings
To understand the textures in the natural found objects we then took rubbing of them using charcoal, crayon and oil pastel. This gave an insight into which materials could translate the marks, lines and textures.
Collage
Experimenting with the placement of drawings and marks by making Landscape Jigsaws and Landscape Weaving allowed participants to work together to create new compositions that focused on colour placement and the relationship of mark making.
The final couple of sessions were focused on painting on canvas. Everyone created an artwork full of colour and texture which encompassed everything learnt over the workshop sessions. An extra celebratory session was organised to showcase all of the work and get everyone together in a social setting.
This project has been a real pleasure to deliver and has become much more than being creative. New skills have been gained, confidence increased, new friendships have formed but most of all lots of fun was had by all involved. A parent participant commented,
"These workshops helped me see art as a way of meeting a sensory need for my child and helped me think out of the box at how to incorporate this into our daily lives".
