St Helens settings with Paul Clarkson, Installation Artist
Paul's intention was to create body awareness as he worked with parents and toddlers at the Sure Start group and early years children in Sutton Manor Early Years Unit. Silhouettes of children's heads were made using a projector and then body parts were drawn around and cut out. These body parts were painted by the children and lastly strung together often painstakingly and skilfully by the children. The overall effect of these life size moveable figures ranging from babies to five years old strung around the room was stunning.
Again all the children wanted to make their own figures and the task became demanding for the artist but it was hard to ignore the excitement and enthusiasm of the children. Using simple techniques and allowing the children to interpret personally resulted in a high level of interest from the children and the end product gave them a felling of such success and satisfaction and many new skills had been acquired.
At the end of the project both artists and practitioners filled in evaluation forms and these were very positive from both groups. Practitioners felt they had learned a lot from a very special experience and artists would all have liked to continue their work with early years groups. The children had shown obvious enjoyment in the project and had been amazing in the abilities and talents displayed. Some very strong and positive messages had been received about the value of young children working alongside an artist.
The legacy from the project is a new commitment to early years children working alongside artists whenever possible and the certain knowledge that children are able to benefit from these experiences from a very young age. The project had fulfilled and exceeded expectations both in terms of creativity and diversity issues and the spin off from it is proving enormous.
