Animating the Aliens

April 4, 2019 / sarahjfeatherstone / 2 Comments

On the after-school Storytelling and Art course at Llanover Hall, the children decided to create a theatre out of cardboard. As our theme for that week was Sci-fi, everyone made alien characters to star in the show. On the first week, the parents got a preview of act one, with one boy being narrator, others changing the set and moving the characters.

Over the weeks, Future Class Theatre continued to develop. Scenery and back drops were painted. A script with four scenes was written. Characters were made out of air-drying clay and painted. And finally, a mini animation of the story to be edited.

sculpting aliens out of clay

painting the theatre

Into the Magical Forest: Creative Schools

January 25, 2019January 25, 2019 / sarahjfeatherstone / Leave a comment

Dod yn ôl at fynghoed: this is the title of the latest Creative Schools project I am working on in Tonypandy. In Welsh, it translates as “to return to my trees”, or “to return to a balanced state of mind”. The aim is to bring the children back into contact with nature through outings, stories, and creativity: collecting and printing leaves, working with clay, and willow weaving. There is a small area in the school yard that is to be transformed into a nature portal, a magical area the children can retreat to.

On an outing to a local forestry area, the children collected natural items to form a gateway into the woods where stories would be shared. Some had never been walking in a forest before. They jumped through the gateway in turn reciting the password: I mewn i’r goedwig hudol! (Into the magical forest!)

The Gateway to the Magical Forest

Discovering a fairy stone, and puffball mushrooms.

Doing leaf rubbings using wax crayons.

Working with clay.

Clay sculptures inspired by the woods and stories.

Elves and Trolls

November 27, 2018 / sarahjfeatherstone / Leave a comment

Exploring the amazingly magical Iceland this week on the Children’s Storytelling and Art Course, where an elf expert is consulted before routing a new road through rock piles that may be elf habitats, and trolls are everywhere in the landscape if you know where to look.

Elf Queen by Bethan

Troll by George

Trolls by Theo

Elf Ship by Iolo

Satlech by George

Ghost Mazes by George and Caius, and poltergist by Paddy.

Chimeric Collages

November 6, 2018 / sarahjfeatherstone / Leave a comment

Travelling back in time to Ancient Greece this week, the children of the Storytelling and Art course heard about the many chimeric creatures that inhabit the myths: Minotaur, Satyr, Harpy, Sphinx, and Chimera. Inspired, they created their own hybrid monsters, cutting up old magazines to produce these fantastic collages.

Windows on the World

October 17, 2018October 17, 2018 / sarahjfeatherstone / Leave a comment

In their passports, participants of the Storytelling and Art from Around the World course inserted a picture of themselves as a character of their choosing complete with name, magical attributes, and planet of origin.

Using coloured acetates, windows were made to look in upon various characters created in response to folk stories. This week: Il Gatto Mammone, or The Tale of the Cats in which a girl tugs up a cauliflower revealing a large tunnel into the earth that leads her to a house of cats and adventures therein.

Voices on the Wind

February 16, 2018August 22, 2018 / sarahjfeatherstone / Leave a comment

For the past five months, I’ve been a creative practitioner in a primary school, working with a storyteller to produce a record of the stories about the local area surrounding the school. We have covered a vast time period, from the Bronze age, right up to the mid-19th century. I have been using printmaking with the children to produce flags and banners to decorate a structure in the grounds now known as the ‘Tŷ unnos’, or ‘One-Night house’. In old Welsh law, it was stated that anyone who could build a house on common ground in a night, with a fire in the hearth by morning could own the land as a freehold.

Banners and flags are interspersed all around the Tŷ unnos, drawn and printed by the children and myself in response to the tales. The map below is a record of traditional Welsh myths that Lowri shared with the children.

Natural Abstracts

February 13, 2018July 11, 2018 / sarahjfeatherstone / 2 Comments

Some stunning paintings made in response to two stories from Africa today on the Children’s Art and Storytelling course that I am running at Llanover Hall Arts Centre. ‘Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky’ – a Nigerian folktale, and ‘The Lion’s Whisker’ – an Ethiopian Folktale.

Elements by Jim age 9

African landscape by Paddy, age 9

Camouflaged Lion by Iolo, age 6

Sun by Paddy, age 9

Witch Doctor by George, age 7

Witch Doctor Dance by Jim, age 9

Elements II by Jim age 9

African Landscape By George, age 7

Preliminary Drawings:

Lion, by George; Winged Lion with Horn by Paddy, Mask by Paddy, Compound of Sun and Moon for the Water by George, Sun and Water by Iolo.

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Sarah J Featherstone

Children’s art