In June of 2024 GemArts were awarded a North East Cultural Education Fund grant to deliver inspiring activities with young people from Caedmon school. Year 4 and 5 students at Caedmon school were paired with creatives from GemArts to explore the arts through making and planning their own ideas for an arts festival. As part of GemArts award winning Masala Festival students made their own art and helped plan workshops for their community at GemArts Mini Mela.

GemArts attended our school over the summer term and worked with Year 5 and 6. Both classes worked with two skilled artists who we engaging and knowledgeable. The children were given background information about their artists' careers and the paths they'd taken in education and in life to reach the point in their careers they were at. Our school invests a lot of effort in trying to inspire children to consider different career options after school and having two people who had successfully achieved careers as artists was very inspirational to our children, especially as it was clear to them how the artists had reached their goals. It gave our children the sense that they too could go on to achieve careers in art if they so wished. We found they workshops extremely enjoyable, inspirational and they brought a sense of culture, community and creativity to our school.

Kathryn Carey, Caedmon school

This project was funded by Gateshead Council using UKSPF funding and delivered by GemArts Learning and Participation team.

Jayamini de Silva

Year 5 students were paired with Jayamini de Silva: Jayamini is a painter and community artist from Sri Lanka. She discussed the big inspirations in her work including Picasso and abstract expressionism. In this project Jayamini wanted to develop her ability to express ideas through art and show students how to get inspired by artists and their surroundings.

Jayamini de Silva

“We had an introduction session about the whole project on the first morning. Then followed by a PowerPoint presentation about me and my art practice. Children were encouraged to get inspired by my various techniques and styles of art. Children made a mini 6 pages booklet on their own and noted their ideas by little illustrations and symbols. Then they were encouraged to improve one of their ideas on a piece of paper. Children used sharpies, felt tips, coloured pencils and oil pastels and chalks to develop their work. 3rd day introduced a new artist (Pablo Picasso) which I am inspired by to the class and talked about his style and how he invented the cubism. Children were asked to get inspired by cubism to create their own portraits on a canvas paper with acrylic paints so Children learn how to use acrylic on canvas using brushes and tools. “

-Jayamini de Silva

Cubist portraits from Caedmon school students

To reflect back the creativity of the young people Jayamini developed a workshop for Masala Festival Mini Mela at Bensham Grove. This workshop would look at how cubists made art that reflected movement- a kite making workshop. Jayamini play tested her workshop with a youth group from Action Foundation These young people have experiences of migration and asylum seeking- they gave valuable insights into how to make the workshop more engaging and streamlined the designs to speed up the activity. It was still a more in depth workshop for our usual Mini Mela structure so Jayamini worked closely with a volunteer throughout the day.

Action Foundation kite playtest workshop

Reflecting on whether she achieved her initial goals Jayamini said:

“I think I achieved [my goal] well. Talking to children, getting their ideas and making them confident, also providing multiple examples and support made them more creative. I am super proud of the work they have done and feel the project was a huge success. Thanks to the class teachers, appreciate their enthusiasm and support throughout the project. “

Based on this project Jayamini was invited back to Caedmon school to deliver a school wide Diwali activity, every student learned about the festival and made celebratory artwork in October 2024.

Sofia Barton

Year 6 worked with Sofia Barton. Sofia is an illustrator who uses the local landscape and her heritage to create miniatures and artwork that reflects the vibrancy she sees in the North East.

Sofia Barton at our Masala Festival Mini Mela