We were excited to be asked by Sacred Heart Primary School, part of the Bishop Bewick Trust, to devise and co-produce a GLOW Newcastle Artists’ Residency, celebrating Year 6 children’s interpretations of their global Sacred Heart network’s core goals.
Key to the design of this residency were the ideas of growth and transition, moving through and beyond primary school. The network’s core goals of faith, personal growth, community, intellect and social awareness form a framework around the children’s wider learning, and a familiar structure to lean on as they navigate the changes life brings.
The school’s ambition was to make these core goals physically present and immediately relatable for the children. We identified music, construction and sculpting as accessible media for the school’s multi-lingual family. We then supported the school to recruit two fabulous artists, ceramicist Annabel Talbot Bonin and composer and lyricist Dr. Dave Camlin to work with the children to express their responses to the network’s core goals.
Annabel Talbot Bonin and Dave Camlin began by co-facilitating a creative intervention or “happening” at the school, where Year 5 and Year 6 children used collage, pens, paints, crayons and other media to create huge mood boards exploring their responses to the 5 core goals.
These ideas became springboards for their lyric banks and visual symbole which they carved into clay tiles. Annabel worked with the children to group these tiles thematically and then use them to create plinths and Roman vases for the sculpture trail.
A local building firm donated the materials and expertise to install these scultputres safely on a mile-long track running through the school grounds, and the school’s partner secondary, Sacred Heart High School, allowed the use of their kilns for firing the vases.
Both Year 6 classes created lyric banks building on their original ideas during the first creative interventions. They then co-wrote, rehearsed and co-performed their song with Dr. Cave Camlin.
We were delighted to arrrange a professional recording day at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, in Gateshead. The day included “behind the scenes” tours of the venue, building on GLOW Newcastle’s mission to demystify Creative Careers and support young people in Newcastle to learn more about working in our cultural and creative sector.
A brilliant, well-attended celebration event launched the sculpture trail, introduced and blessed by the Bishop of Newcastle with children, parents, carers, Board Directors and leaders from the wider Sacred Heart movement being challenegd to “walk a mile” and learn abot the core goals and the children’s interpretations of them. Walkers were encourages to make a pledge at each sculture. GLOW’s was to do everything we can to co-create more beautiful and impactful collaborations like this one.