Children and young people, Older people

Art of Play

The project was devised by Pip Lewis building on relationships that had been developed in Project Peace. This new intergenerational project again involved bringing together a group of pupils from Prendergast school with members of Meadowpark Day Centre to work together on a creative art project.

Both of the organisations involved felt that it was important to create a permanent legacy as a celebration of their collaboration and it was agreed that the creation of a ceramic panel which could be displayed in the dining room shared by both groups would be a means of doing this.

Following a series of initial planning meetings, Pip worked with ceramicist Gina Hughes to devise a project that would be acheivable within the constraints of the time and space available. The theme for the project was shared experiences of play across the generations.

The first two sessions involved working seperately with the younger and older people, providing an opportunity to introduce the project and get to know the participants.

The different generations met up on the third session, working in pairs, to get to know each other and playing games that could feed in to the wider project. The fourth session introduced the material of clay and the intergenerational pairing worked together to impress designs in to the clay tiles.

The fifth session provided an opportunity to introduce colour before the panels were given a final firing by Gina and set in a frame to create the finished panel.

The final session was a chance to celebrate and evaluate the project, with individual brass rubbings taken from sections of the panel and shared evaluation sheets being completed by all the participants.

The following slideshow documents the project.