18 Oct Working with Children
On Wednesday 14th October Melanie Thompson led a workshop especially created for small group of pupils based in Meare ( www.abbotswayschool.co.uk)
The idea for the workshop came from Kirsten, a teacher from Abbots Way School who approached Melanie after visiting Heart of The Tribe gallery. Kirsten felt very inspired by Melanie’s installation and wanted to share this with her pupils
Melanie says “On a brilliantly sunny day we had 4 pupils and 2 teachers come for our first educational workshop for children. To begin, we took a tour of the gallery to explore all the work in the group exhibition ‘Diversity’, where we discussed the artist’s motivations and processes. We then moved onto the garden, where they were able to see my installation. I told them why and how I made the banners during lockdown and asked them to think of what they would write from their experiences. We then went into the prepared event room, explored different ways of writing and finally ended up putting their statements on pre-prepared black boards with white paint. We ended the workshop with everybody showing their work in the garden alongside mine.”
For us at Heart of The Tribe it is always a pleasure to be able to host children and help introduce them to art in all its varieties. These pupils were fantastic and we are very impressed with the response that they created to what they saw and experienced.
If you are an individual or organisation that would like to talk to us about the possibility of introducing young people to our space please get in touch. We offer free private access for children of all ages between 9am and 2pm on wednesdays, when we are closed to the public.