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Year 6 pupils, Kyle and Cadey from Senacre Wood Primary School’s Arts Council, close Artsmark Celebration Week by telling us what they got up to and share their Artsmark journey with us. 

This week we have been celebrating our Artsmark journey!

At Senacre Wood Primary School we love the arts and have done all sorts of different types of art such as using recycled cardboard to create a huge woodland installation in our corridor with Animate Arts Company, drawing and painting in different styles of artists such as Pablo Picasso, making a life size rhino out of recycling from our lunchboxes, creating sculptures for our Forest School area by weaving willow and designing and creating beautiful pieces of art which are framed all around our school.

We love participating in lots of different competitions and in the last year we have been runners up in the Better Energy Awards ‘Totally Creative’ category, won a diversity poster competition run by Maidstone Borough Council, came second in design a banner for ‘Better Air’ and even had two children’s work shortlisted for the Turner Contemporary ‘Art Rebels’ competition, one of which was awarded ‘Highly Commended’ and was displayed in the gallery! We’ve also had artwork displayed in our local library and in our local church.

We’ve done art on school trips and Year 4 worked with Maidstone Museum to achieve their Art Awards.  School clubs include knitting, dance, craft, t-shirt design/fashion, story illustration, drama, choir and felting so there are always lots to choose from.

This term the whole school has been answering our Big Question “What is art?” We had a giant piece of paper and everyone in the school was invited to write or draw on it to answer the question. We decided it’s where you have lots of fun and it doesn’t have to look perfect, so it could be comic art, a sculpture or something else. It’s a way of showing people what you’re thinking, without needing to say anything.

Over the summer holiday we had one of the rooms in school converted into an art studio. It’s absolutely amazing to be able to work in such a creative space and because the worktops came splattered with paint, we can make as much mess as we like without anyone worrying about it!

We’ve also been really lucky over the last couple of months as we have had visits from not one, but two poets! They used their own creative writing and instruments to get everyone engaged in performance.

During World Book Day this year, we wanted to get a different perspective on the creation of books so we invited Julia Woolfe to our school, who illustrates children’s stories. She even did some live illustrating us and we have her drawings to frame for the Art Studio- she was so inspiring! Louie and I (Kyle) were able to show her our graphic novels that we’ve been creating over the year.

Our teachers here at Senacre Wood plan drama lessons once a every fortnight so that we can express our ideas through the arts- they say that this helps children to plan their work, explore ideas and communicate new concepts!

During this term in music year 6 were invited to participate in the fabulous Music at Malling Festival. We had a workshop with composer Jason Rowlands where we composed a piece inspired by The Three Little Pigs by Roald Dahl. We then had the opportunity to perform in front of a live audience at West Malling Church while being accompanied by a professional orchestra.

Our harvest festival service was really fun too. KS1 and Year 3 performed songs taught to us by our wonderful new music teacher, Mrs Cripps and KS2 learned raps, poems and compositions to perform to parents at St Martin’s Church.

Year R to 3 are having music lessons from our specialist music teacher Mrs Cripps while Years 4, 5 and 6 are having ukelele and guitar tuition from Mr Parry from Kent Music School.

Our school choir are once again preparing for Young Voices at the O2 in January. We have a wide range of songs to learn from traditional music to modern pop songs with a healthy dose of Queen!

We can’t wait to find out what other arty things we’re going to get involved in next year! 

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