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Commissions

Working with Schools

Over the years The Project Group has formed strong links with educational establishments.  We have held a number of workshops for local schools, including West Felton Primary School, Morda Primary School and Oswestry Education Centre.  We are also in discussion with other organisations to formulate a programme of workshops for college students as part of their diploma, and for secondary school pupils as extra curricular activities.

 

Extended School

The Project Group was approached by Lakeland School, Ellesmere, to run workshops as part of the Extended School programme of after school activities.  The proposal was to run a 6 week course for students in years 8 - 11.  

A group of 12 students and a member of staff attended a course on working with glass; an introduction to glass fusing and kiln forming.  A second group were offered the same course in the summer term.  

We hope this partnership will continue in the next school year.

 

 

Oswestry Education Centre

The most significant development has been the increasing partnership with Oswestry Education Centre.

In Autumn 2007, The Project Group applied for funding from Oswestry Borough Council's Crime Reduction Partnership, to run three 2 day workshops with young people from the local pupil referral unit.  This was a project with an entrepreneurial aim, teaching the pupils how to design and make retail items from silk, felt and glass.  The highlight of the training programme was a joint Christmas sale at our studio where the products made during the training sessions (and finished in many hours outside the sessions) were sold.  The day was very successful and represented a great end to the project.

This led to the head of the Education Service commissioning The Project Group to put together an arts programme for the students, covering workshop sessions in a wide variety of materials, every second Wednesday during term time.  Some sessions were geared towards the design and creation of a finished article, others were purely experimental, getting to know new materials and processes.

These workshops represented a great opportunity for two marginalised groups to meet and work together in an environment that's free of stigma.

The partnership with Oswestry Education Centre is ongoing.  Following an evaluation of last year's sessions with the students, and based on some of the ideas they suggested, we started a new programme of work with the young people.  

 

The story from one of the pupils:

"During this half term we worked with the Project Group and we made silk scarves and ties and glass pictures and glass Christmas tree decorations which were really nice. After we finished all the felt and silk and glass we had a big sale that was tremendous fun but surprisingly exhausting and the products that the students made would get half the money when they sold them. The art people we worked with were very helpful with ideas on what to make and showing us how to use the material.

Before we could sell anything we had to think of packaging, so we thought of wrapping them in tissue paper then putting them in paper bags with our logo stamp on it which people loved. We all had to think what thing we wanted to do for the sale. I did wrapping products up with Mark, Lisa was greeting people at the door and Gareth was selling the products. The day of the sale went really well, the busiest bit was in the morning. There were so many people buying things which was good for us to make money, and then it finally calmed down later on. The day after the sale we worked out how much money we made altogether it was £659.19. We couldn’t believe it! We were all amazed to see how much had sold considering on the first day we didn’t have a clue about selling things. The most enjoyable part of the event was seeing how many positive quotes were being said around in the sale and how beautiful our work was. I think we all learnt so many new skills including how to cut glass and make candle holders and dying scarves, and we would love to do it again."