The Carnival Arts Group

In recent years the Carnival Arts group have worked mainly in schools taking on residencies, leading workshops in large three dimensional structures and processional objects as well as printmaking and mask making. The work has taken us nation wide with participating schools as far apart as Buckie High, near Inverness to Bournemouth on the south coast. The projects are curriculum based and we can train teachers and classroom assistants to help facilitate the sessions. In addition to schools work we offer projects to outdoor events such as the Big Chill festival who have used photographs of the structures produced for marketing and advertising because of the stunning visual impact of the work. Also we are regularly booked by the Royal Horticultural Society Gardens to run our 'eco art' workshops a great outdoor family inclusive landscape art project. More locally Eastnor castle near Ledbury have contracted the carnival arts group to run sessions at their 'Kids week' every summer for the last ten years. This involves three separate disciplines the large structures, small personalised willow withy objects and flag making.

Since 19 work undertaken in 2009

March 13: St Peters Primary school, Cherry Tree Close Bromyard, HR7 4UY alongside a film project with the Rural Media company the Carnival arts group were asked to produce a wedding bower for the film set. St Peters Primary were involved with the film so we approached them to help us make the paper flowers to dress the bower. Three classes were recruited and we ran a 45 minuet session with each class creating almost 200 flowers.

March 30 and 31st: Whitehall Nursery and Infant School, West Bromwich Road, Caldmore, Walsall, WS1 3HS Art Teacher John Palmer booked the Carnival arts group to work with three classes to make costumes for a Caribbean carnival. We made headdresses in the first session and individual hand held accessories in the second. The classes were colour coded and themed to create a collective identity.

April 22: Nunnery Wood Primary School Prestwich Avenue Worcester WR5 1QE As a pre project skills learning facility, all the teachers and classroom assistants of Nunnery wood primary school attended a workshop after school and created small willow withy objects.

May 19 and 20th. Nunnery Wood Primary school. This time the children had a chance to make willow withy structures. Themed on mythical creatures Three classes researched came up with drawings and made many fantastical creatures for their school arts week project.

May 26 to 28th: Royal Horticultural Society Garden, Harlow Carr Crag Lane Harrogate HG3 1QB
Wildlife in the Garden. The Carnival arts group ran two workshops simultaneously, small withy structures and large structures.

Project 1

At Kew Riverside primary school we were asked to provide workshops to create seven class mascots for a carnival parade. The mascots were all wild animals so we had facilitate the children to make a giraffe, monkey, crocodile, elephant, zebra, rhino and lion. We took each class individuality with two sessions each. The first session was made up of researching the animal to find pictures so the children could visualise their objects. Drawing and breaking down the creatures to component parts so each group could be split up