Longcot & Fernham CE Primary School

Longcot & Fernham CE Primary school is a small rural primary school in Oxfordshire. Our catchment area draws pupils locally and from the surrounding villages. There are presently 112 pupils on roll aged between 5 and 11 years of age.

As an Artsmark Gold school we pride ourselves in providing first class arts experiences for all of our pupils and as such we are always looking for new ways of doing this. We feel it is vitally important for all children to have a range of high quality arts experiences and encourage them to develop any artistic skills they have no matter what form this may take.

As such last term we decided to focus on the theme of Alice in Wonderland to coincide with the county wide bicentenary celebrations of this classic piece of Literature. The project involved introducing the story to all of our children through film, building on this knowledge through narrative and poetry in Literacy lessons, producing a KS2 performance of the story on stage involving dance, drama and music for parents and community. Our celebrations then culminated at the end of term in a whole school carnival procession through the village to which all of the local community and press were invited.

This was the first time such a carnival procession had taken place in our village and was highly praised for its colour, vivacity and the enjoyment it brought to all the villagers and audience who came to watch. There were plenty of suggestions afterwards that this should become an annual event!

In order to get this far we had to plan the event very carefully, arranging for all risk assessments to be made and county road closure notices to be in place for the afternoon before we could turn our thoughts to the art involved.

Ensuring the children enjoyed the experience and learned about creating and carrying out art with a community purpose was also at the forefront of our minds in setting up this project. We also wanted to give the children the opportunity of working with a professional artist during the design stages of the project and so enlisted the help of local artist Helen Jacobs.

Initial planning identified the need for the children to be very familiar with the story and its component parts. In KS1 this was done through film and then watching a live school performance of the story. We then used our artist in residence to help them come up with a theme and support design ideas for their props and costumes.

Class 1 (FS/Y1) became the playing cards, whilst Class 2 (Y1/2) took on the roles of teapots, cups and saucers from the Mad Hatters Tea Party. They also choreographed dancing to music as they paraded along the street.

KS2 worked on the narrative through film and some written work in literacy. This was then transferred into a KS2 performance of Alice in Wonderland which involved every child in having a role. The major roles and speaking parts were very tricky. Coupled with dances and the learning of over 11 songs including some difficult solos all of the children stepped up to the mark. The performance ran on two evenings to a packed house and was declared a great success by all in the audience.

This set the scene for our carnival.

Some of the major role players (the King & Queen of Hearts, Mad Hatter etc) from our performance accompanied the gaily decorated float (a tractor and trailer kindly loaned by a local farmer).

The children in Class 3 (Y3/4) wanted to make some very large mini-beasts from ‘Alice’s  garden’. These were formed from willow withies and covered in tissue paper. It took 2-3 children holding them high above their heads to carry them along the street. The remainder of the class composed a piece of rhythmic samba for accompaniment and marched down the streets, with drums and percussion instruments, dressed in costume to the samba rhythm.

Children from Class 4 (Y5/6) decided to be the flowers from the garden. They designed and made, under the tuition of artist Helen Jacobs, headdresses representing flowers. Again these were made from willow withies covered with wet strength tissue and painted in bright colours. They then chose a suitable piece of celebratory music and choreographed a dance that could be repeated on their progress through the village.

On return to school all children took part in a Mad Hatters tea party in the school hall in celebration of the event. It was a fantastic day, the sun shone and everyone had a wonderful time. It also did as we hoped and showed the children that art can not only be decorative and enjoyable but have a practical purpose for a specific audience.

We believe that through this project we managed to demonstrate and fulfil parts of each of the five areas above. We believe we have shown how a project such as this can accomplish much for the school, its pupils and the wider community involved. All of our children were allowed to shine through a range of artistic talents and definitely fulfilled the tenets of Excellence for All.