Grange Park

Art Week - Local Artists

Art Week 17^th – 21^st April

As part of the cultural journey that Grange Park has embarked on over the past three years, we organised local artist, Kerry Cook, to work with our school to finalise our cultural map. Following the Creative School’s Project, we have designed a map of Sunderland highlighting important cultural venues which have inspired our curriculum. The aim of the week was to support the children’s aspirations and to work alongside a real life artist to draw key landmarks which have had an important role in shaping our curriculum. The purpose of the map will not only be to enhance our school curriculum, but will be placed on our school website and distributed to local schools and venues to be used as a checklist, supporting our wider community when experiencing cultural venues and to enhance cultural capital.

On Monday 17^th April, children from years 3-6 had a workshop time allocated to look at key landmarks in Sunderland, linking their direct experience of visiting the venues during school to then working with an artist to draw them. The drawings by the children will then be used on the map to highlight the different cultural venues to explore

Year 4

• I really enjoyed working with a real life artist. I enjoyed experimenting with drawing landmarks that I know
• Kerry was so fun to work with, I really enjoyed the warm ups to get me ready to draw!

Year 3

- I enjoyed creating an image and colouring it in. It was cool to make a big picture with my friends. 

- I learned how to draw and how drawings can be broken down into simple shapes sometimes. 

- I practiced making a stencil and using that to make my artwork. 

- I learned that if I take my time, I can make my colouring look more realistic.

 Year 6

Skills used - sketching and drawing skills.

Learned - they improved their sketching and drawing skills, learned how to make sketches more specific for clarity.

Enjoyed - Kerry described something and they had to sketch it, she kept adding more description which they had to include - this was fun. Loved drawing and sketching landmarks and other things associated with Sunderland on the big rolls of paper on the floor.

On Wednesday 19^th April, children in Year 1 worked alongside Kerry to explore L.S.Lowry who is a local famous artist. This links with the year 1 Art curriculum, where the children explored nature and what inspires artists to create their work. The children then created their own stickmen inspired by their own interpretation of Lowry and nature in our school garden.

Pupil voice:

• “I liked making the faces out of nature, it was fun to find things from the garden to use.” 
• “I liked learning about Lowry because he lived in Sunderland.” 
• “ I loved everything!” 

Following from this, On Friday 21^st April the children in Year 2 created sculptures inspired by the Sculpture Trail along The River Wear.

Year 2 

Skills used - collage and clay sculpture.

Learned - how to model with clay - techniques to manipulate the clay and shape it better.

Enjoyed - Using collage to make bright colourful sea creatures and making their own sea creature sculptures with clay.

Leading on from the workshop day for KS2, a small group of children then went to Kerry’s workshop to work on another extremely special project. Here the children, along with other schools, helped to paint the murals for the new Sunderland Train Station!

Another group of children also went to Kerry’s workshop to finalise the drawings for our cultural map, which will be available on our website from Summer 2023.

Student voice:

• It was amazing going to Kerry’s studio! I had never been to an artists studio before but this was brilliant.
• Downstairs other artists had their work on the walls. It was photographs taken by other artists!
• We worked on drawing landscapes we have visited, such as The Empire and National Glass Centre!

Kerry Cook is a local artist in Sunderland who has supported and helped to create our school’s vision of the Cultural Map. You can find more information about what she has on offer via her website: https://www.theartroomsunderland.com/