One of the great things about sponsoring a Lighthouse for CLAN's Light the North art trail is the gift of a little lighthouse sculpture to a local school.
We were delighted to be matched with Aberdeen Grammar School for this, helping to connect businesses, artists, schools and communities through the power of creativity.
It was particularly moving to read the reason why Aberdeen Grammar School had chosen to get involved with the project.
There are two elements to the Little Lights initiative: firstly the gift of a 0.8 meters tall little lighthouse sculpture for each school to design and decorate; and secondly, a cross-curricular creative learning resource pack with a web of ideas to encourage in-class creative thinking, mind-mapping and templates of lighthouses to explore pupils’ design ideas for the application of their design onto the lighthouse sculpture.
We kicked things off with a Zoom chat with three of the teachers from Aberdeen Grammar School - Heléna Murray and Elaine Forrest from the Art Department and Lauren Allan representing Pupil Support (Guidance). Even at this early stage, a huge amount of thought had been put into bringing the programme to life and designing lesson plans that would both engage and educate the pupils involved.
A recent update from the school shared with us more detail about what they've been up to:
Our little lighthouse project has been a collaboration from all of the S2 Art & Design pupils; who have been exploring found objects from the local coastline. Through careful observation, they have created and selected their strongest individual pieces, that in combination, will adorn our little lighthouse along with messages of hope.
In addition to decorating the main little lighthouse, our S2 students have also created individual tiny lighthouses inspired by different landscape artists, featuring different landscapes from the local area. They have aimed to capture their emotions through their use of colour and mark making. Some tiny lighthouses portray solace and hope, whilst some also reflect life’s turbulent times.
With seashore inspired drawings, local Scottish landscape inspired painting sculptures and messages of hope, all of our S2 students are creating works that support the importance of this educational programme, particularly in building personal resilience; physical health and emotional well-being.
In Spring 2021, the little lights will be publicly exhibited in a mini-trail in clusters in local shopping and cultural centres for the duration of the event. They will complement and add real value to the main Light the North trail, showcasing the creativity of the north-east’s children.
We have been very impressed with all the work Aberdeen Grammar School have put in to the Little Lights project and we look forward to seeing more of their outputs as the project develops.
