By Rachel Thompson

In this post, AccessArt team member and Artist Rachel Thompson goes on a creative journey exploring the Ancient Greek Myth Pandora’s Box. The exploration involved reading and discussing the story, designing and creating a clay box inspired by Ancient Greek vases, distressing fabrics and seeing how they move to air rushing past and finally drawing imaginative creatures emerging from the box.

This extended project took place over 3 sessions of approximately 1 hour each, with time left in between for the clay box to dry. The project could be complimented by some drama or history based activities that further explore the text and its themes.

This first activity focussed on Pandora’s Box itself, and re creating one using air dry clay and paint, inspired by the colours and patterns seen in Ancient Greek Amphoras.

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“The sentiment behind this resource idea is lovely and it provides an opportunity to really develop some fine motor skills as well as independence of approach. Taking ownership of the medal design means the sense of achievement is heightened beyond the children just being given one. You can really imagine the positive energy that would surround this activity within a classroom, with each child working on a shared project but embarking on their own creative journey.”  – Rachel, AccessArt

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“It’s great to see music being explored in this way, and combining it with making creates a really interesting immersive project. This activity would work well as part of an extended project looking at musical instruments around the world and some of the natural materials they are made from.” – Rachel, AccessArt

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“You can get a real sense of the environment in this post and how this could provide so much inspiration for creative projects. We are aware there the challenges to exploring the outdoors when many schools are in towns and cities. A way around this could be to have a regular collection of natural objects within the classroom and using them as a stimulus to respond creatively in sketchbooks or in extended projects” – Andrea, AccessArt

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“The sense of journey and feeling of movement is such an interesting part of Cas’ textile work here. We love how location and place is communicated through the variety of fluid and meandering textile marks used. Cas’ Romani background as well as early experience living in Japan make for a rich cultural backdrop to her work. The themes here could be explored in the classroom by asking children to use memories of places they’ve visited to produce a creative response using fabrics and mixed media” – Rachel, AccessArt

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“It’s a really positive thing for an artist to share the concept of the creative journey. At AccessArt we believe journeys are pretty important and we are pleased to show this in action through Toby Pritchard’s post. We particularly like the anthropomorphic element, and how this really brings life to Toby’s work.” – Rachel, AccessArt

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“There’s a really fun element to this activity which is you can imagine all children really enjoying! The idea of food on large scale is a great starter for a sculpture project and an early exploration of working in 3D. What’s really positive to see in this project is how the children used their sketchbooks to design their ice creams prior to working in 3D. They then had the opportunity to re visit and refine their ideas as they worked. This provides a sold foundation for the concept of design development and design through making- both of which underpin any visual arts or design project or profession. For more support on how to develop sketchbook practice in your setting please see our Sketchbook Journey” – Rachel, AccessArt

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“We’re really grateful to Jake from Draw Brighton for sharing this activity which became so well received during lockdown 2020.

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“Rosie highlights the importance of embracing a wide variety of interests and ways of working into our wider creative practice, resulting in wonderfully rich and very personal explorations and outcomes.

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