By Sheila Ceccarelli

One of my most vivid memories from being a teenager myself was going to the Venice Carnival with my dad. The theatre of it was intense and seeing a whole city come alive in costume mesmerising. But what stuck with me more than anything was seeing a city’s craft come to life; on every street corner stalls were selling artisan made carnival masks.

Last year, I asked my dad if he’d draw me a template for an Animal Parade workshop I was doing for my Brilliant Makers Club (then called Milton Road Making Club). I trialled the template first with teenagers at my Experimental Drawing Class to see if it worked and if they would be able to bring the flat template to life by cutting and stapling and turn it into a 3D mask.

Here, a year later, some images from our one hour mask making session (I apologise that some are slightly out of focus, but felt they showed step by step what to do, and might be valuable in that way, but also demonstrated the mastery of the teenagers and what they could produce in such a short space of time).

My dad, a very gifted draftsman man created the template on on old scrap.

Please do use and share the Mask Template.

There is also a Nose Template that you can download, but the noses on the masks below were the invention of the students themselves after having mastered folding and stapling paper.

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AccessArt is a UK Charity and we believe everyone has the right to be creative. AccessArt provides inspiration to help us all reach our creative potential.

Arts and Minds: Time to Introduce Ourselves – A Sculpture Challenge

We kicked off the programme with a quick making challenge which would act as an ice-breaker and introduce students to an array of materials.

Arts and Minds: Asemic Writing and Invented Text

Students were given the opportunity to further explore expressive mark making as a tool for self-expression and a vehicle for communication.

Arts and Minds: Expressive Monoprinting on a Big Scale

Students enjoyed monoprinting on a large scale by rolling printing ink and acrylic paint directly onto the table and experimenting with ways to take prints.

Constructing the World with Collage

Students were invited to use their previously created monoprints to construct large scale collages inspired by the landscape surrounding the college.

Manipulating Clay with Water

In this session teenagers had an abundance of clay and the freedom to play and manipulate form.

With Special Thanks To:

And to Pink Pig sketchbooks for their continued support of AccessArt and providing young people with beautiful books for this project.

Building to the Limit

In this session students were given the challenge of making building blocks out of mixed media and using them to build a sculpture. They were encouraged to experiment with balancing different elements together and setting themselves the challenge of seeing how far they could build before their constructions collapsed.

Drawing for Mindfulness

Students were guided on drawing exercises designed to explore drawing as a tool for seeing and being in the here and now.

Feeling Through Drawing

Students were led on a guided drawing experience of drawing through touch.

Arts and Minds: A ‘Heart-Work’ Conversation

Teenagers were introduced to graphite, charcoal, masking tape and acrylic paint as mediums for communal expressive mark making. A collective drawing was produced, whereby students were encouraged to work in collaboration and in response to each other.

UK Charity AccessArt welcomes artists, educators, teachers and parents both in the UK and overseas.

We believe everyone has the right to be creative and by working together and sharing ideas we can enable everyone to reach their creative potential.

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