Cotgrave Community Garden vegetable bed drawing workshop
A key part of my emerging practice is exploring ways to connect people to the natural world around them. This aim of this workshops was to engage people in observing what whats growing in the community garden, the kids of flowers, fruit and vegetables being grown and the birds and insects they might encounter.
The aim was to then treat a brown recycled cardboard postcard like a miniature vegetable/flower bed and chose what you wanted to ‘plant’ in it by drawing things that you had seen in the garden or by using your imagination, nature stamps and by following the examples provided.
A variety of art materials were provided including pencil crayons, acrylic marker pens, felt tip pens, wax crayons and oil pastels. Nature themed stamps were also provided for people to embellish their work or for those to young to draw details.
I ran this free community workshops at Cotgrave Community Garden.
Free After School Drawing Club for Ages 5-7
Free after-school childcare and opportunities for extra-curricular learning and activity opportunities are limited in our community and our local school was seeking proposals for after-school clubs.
I’m continuing to run a series of 45 minute drawing sessions aimed at 5-7year age group once a week. Introducing children to the idea of creating characters, short comics, drawing faces and facial expressions, treasure maps, space scenes and other fun and kid-centric ideas.
As fine-motor skills and drawing speed are mixed within the groups which spans Year 1 and Year 2, I also set up an area just for colouring-in and by keeping the group size to 15 I’m able to offer a fair amount of 1:1 support while the children are doing the tasks that are introduced at the beginning of the session.
At the end of a block of sessions, which currently span one half term, I provide the children with a participation certificate and stickers.
