The Art & Craft Classroom
GST is completely inclusive which sometimes means that not everyone can or wants to go out into the garden. For those service users we run Arts and Craft sessions three times a week whenever possible geared to the seasons and to the shapes and textures of the natural world. Over the last two years we have refurbished our portacabin classroom and it is now equipped with a woodburner, a rooftop wind turbine and solar panels which allow us to operate 50 weeks a year. We passionately believe that anyone can be creative and can get an enormous amount of pleasure and satisfaction from ‘making’ and ‘doing’. The sessions are extremely popular with everyone and when the weather is not conducive to being outdoors our gardeners are very happy to get covered in glue, paint and all sorts of other materials.
Over the last few months (2018) the Art and Craft group have been learning about famous artists. Holly, our Art and Craft tutor, picks a famous image and the group copies and interprets as each sees fit. So far artists studied in this way have included Mondrian, Picasso, Munch, Georgia O'Keefe and Dali. The group have really enjoyed these particular sessions and get a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction out of using various media and ending up with a recognisable image.
Other recent sessions have included making dragonflies., Mondrian based abstract trees, fabric shoulder bags, clay work, decorated 3D cardboard trees, mosaic seahorses and, because of the summer heatwave, Mondrian paper fans!
Since our move from the Green Britain Centre in December 2018 the Arts and Crafts classes have been running as usual but at the Iceni Community centre instead. We have been very creative with our creativity as we can't make as much mess as usual but that hasn't stopped us producing really good work and having really entertaining sessions!