See press coverage of this exhibition in The Star

The Point was buzzing with the sound of excited children when pupils from Balby Central Primary School came to see the grand opening of an exhibition of their work.

The children got a taste of what it feels like to be an artist when they saw their work in the space and proudly pointed it out to parents, teachers and staff at darts, with Obie aged 8 exclaiming ‘This is really good!’

Peter McGuigan, Headteacher at Balby Central Primary School was enthusiastic about the benefits of the project: ‘You very often see 37 of the same thing when we do work in class, but in this exhibition all the work is different. The children were really inspired by getting to work alongside Kate: it was very much their project but she was there to guide and advise.’ He also commented that: ‘The process of creating the work was in many ways more valuable than the outcome, as children were introduced to new skills gradually in ‘bite-sized chunks’.

Working around the topic of Safari, visual artist Kate Sully, teacher Beth Stephenson and the children aged 7-8 had the freedom to express their ideas through the creation of 3D and audio work. As a result pupils found their safari taking them to a rainbow planet, a golden temple and many places in between!

Each pupil kept a project sketchbook where they recorded all their ideas and how they developed. Keeping these journals helped promote deeper thinking and reflecting from the children about what they need to find out to help them decide on ways forward with their work. These sketchbooks form part of the exhibition.

Artist Kate Sully explains more: 'We hoped the project would help children to gain experience of having an idea, starting work on it, then exploring and refining their ideas before creating the end product.' This hands-on involvement in deciding how things should look is key to a project which encouraged independent thinking.

Teacher Beth Stephenson said: 'Working with Kate has changed the way the class approach projects. Our topic now is the tudors and I’ve notice quite a change in how they have approached creating tudor shields – their thinking seems more robust and they are not so upset about having their work critiqued.  The children can talk about their work in an intellectual way… they know exactly why they did what they did.'

Kate sums up: “With the support of their teacher and the school, I feel that these sessions had a great impact on the pupils – allowing them to have their own ideas and see them through. It would be great to revisit this class in years to come to see how these sessions may have affected the way they approach projects from now on.”

To talk about your school being involved in a similar project please get in touch with Beci at darts on 01302 341662.

See press coverage of this exhibition in The Star