Welcome to a special blog to celebrate our first SSMJ One Picture arts event. Two full days of creativity inspired by one painting from the Ashmolean museum. We chose Camille Pissarro’s Bath Road, London as the first SSMJ One Picture inspiration. OurJunior Arts Council joined Mrs Blackwell and myself, to research the picture in the Ashmolean Museum’s Pissarro room. They sketched from the painting, discussed it and reported back in our special assembly. With most of our children walking or cycling down Bedford Street every day to get to our school, we hoped they could relate to Pissarro’s painting of Victorian houses, trees, hedges and a child in the garden. We also have the ‘big house’ overlooking our field – an inspiration in itself.
It was a fun couple of days, with a full day of art on Thursday and a day of creative writing on Friday – all inspired by Pissarro’s painting. We ended the days with a buzzy and extremely busy pop up exhibition in our main hall – with the children excited to share their work and parents and carers excited to see the art and read the stories.
Every child experienced drawing outside during the art day (at one point over 100 children were outside drawing together – what a treat!). Each class then made work in different media, developed from the painting and their sketches. We had printing stations, clay work, wire sculpture, string art, pastels, watercolour, textiles and more. It was wonderful to see the energy and joyful creativity across our school.
After all that the children were full of ideas for their creative writing day. We used the painting to inspire a whole school writing activity about a secret found in the garden. The children came up with some wonderful, imaginative ideas, with some classes acting out their ideas first and then getting pen, or pencil, to paper.
Thanks to the creativity and enthusiasm of our children and staff, our families and carers who visited the exhibition and our wonderful bunch of year 6 curators and sign writers, we all had a great couple of creative days.
Also, thank you to the Ashmolean Museum, Camille Pissarro and Bedford Street for providing the inspiration for the day. It was lovely to see the owners of the ‘big house’ at our pop-up exhibition, enjoying the children’s artwork.
Ali Moreton
and the Arts Team
