With the academic year coming to an end, so have our Year 6 Art Workshops!
July 29, 2021
We began offering our Art Workshops to primary schools for Year 6 classes in the lead up to Mental Health Awareness Week back in May, and they were all based around the theme for the week which was ‘Nature’.
Despite a few sessions needing to be cancelled due to COVID restrictions, we’re delighted that we were still able to work with 664 students, via 28 workshops, in 20 schools across the Island.
The aim of these workshops was to encourage the children to observe the natural world around them and reflect on the calming and grounding effects that nature can offer; and our amazing Art Psychotherapists, Emily and Fern, supported the children through some guided visualisation before each child created an individual piece of a nature-inspired totem pole.
When the clay had dried, and the paint where some of the schools chose to go one step further and decorate their totem pole pieces, the individual pieces were then brought together into one large totem pole. This was a symbolic marker of the children’s bonds, friendships and whole school community experience. In the final week of school, the children dismantled their totem poles and each took their individual art pieces home as a symbolic milestone of their final primary school year.
Delivering these workshops would not have been possible without the amazing generosity of corporate organisations and individuals from our local community, who throughout Mental Health Awareness Week not only helped to raise awareness about the importance of mental health and the vital early intervention and prevention mental health support we provide in schools, the workplace and wider community, but also raised funds to help us to continue our vital work, as these funds were used to cover the cost of the supplies for the workshops.
We’ve thoroughly enjoyed delivering these Art Workshops over the past couple of months, and have been continually amazed at how enthusiastically the children embraced the activity as well as their creativity. It would be impossible to share pictures of all of the incredible creations, but here are just a few of our favourites.
