Parents from the Raglan community are being offered another opportunity to be involved in a series of quality and engaging visual arts classes that teach them how to encourage creativity in their children. The Creative Embrace journey sets sail again next Monday and will be exploring Screen Printing for the term.
The inaugural workshop at the end of last year ran once a week for 6 weeks and explored Clay. Each class parents were given the opportunity to create a one off project, whilst their child made a simplified version alongside them. For example, a Nature Imprinted Vase, where children were encouraged to gather flowers and plants to imprint on the clay vase they made using a slab technique. Parents learnt all three different hand-building techniques, which have given them an excellent foundation for a wide range of future projects that they may now embark on.
The classes also aimed to saturate participants with inspiration, and so a multi media approach was used. Each class, three different sources of visual stimuli were shown; a slide show of visual art, a creative music clip usually featuring unusual animation and at the end of each lesson they were handed a sheet that had the week’s Creative Challenges and a creative tip to “ignite the fire”. Art Journals were supplied to encourage parents to record the new journey. Comments made by parents were “I loved everything about it, great ideas and Inspiration”, “Fun, fresh and inspiring, we look forward to it every week”, “Loved it – it was so much fun!”
The innovative approach of parents as learners alongside their children has increased parent involvement in their child’s education. It has taught parents that they can play a pivotal role in their child’s development by promoting positive role modeling and motivating and engaging them in their learning. It has also begun to help build up the visual arts as a source of strength within the community which in turn will begin to be a source of pride and vitality.
Thank you to the Raglan Lions Club for last terms funding.
Place: The Old School Arts Centre, Stewart St, Raglan
Dates: Mondays 18th Feb – 25 March, 10 – 11.30am
Parents who would like to be involved can contact Natasha Rao on (07) 825 0946 / 0277 584 381 or Facebook: CreativEmbrace