Our second year has been a challenging one as it was interrupted by the pandemic. Our Creative Associate, Catherine, worked with us to engage in another consultation process but through very challenging circumstances as everyone was at home. This word cloud was created using the responses we got online.

There was a desire to connect with the our local woodland (Barna Woods) to using circus skills, origami and coding. Catherine helped us connect with three artists: Amélie Bal, Kim Jenkinson and Orla Casey.

Amélie led some fantastic, explorative activities primarily with the infants in the woods related to balancing, using implements and exploring an environment through using circus skills. All the children eventually had the experience, and it was great fun and helped us also be more active in the woods.

Kim worked with 1st, 2nd and 3rd Class through Zoom. They created nature journals and amazing creatures out of paper and wire.

They also created some unusual creatures using natural materials.

Finally, Orla created some online tutorials for 4th and 5th Class to use Unity and Visual Studio to create games inspired by the movement activities the infants did in Barna Woods and using the creatures drawn by the middle classes as their game characters.