I Was Really Happy To be Invited To Take Part In This Amazing Project

I was really happy to be invited to take part in this amazing project by Common Ground Arts, bringing high quality arts activities to special educational needs schools, working with children and young people of all ages. I was invited to work with students with autism at Baskerville School in Harbourne, Birmingham. They were exploring Gaudi within their curriculum and had some experience of making mosaics with their fab teacher, Lisa Croft – both Lisa and her pupils wanted to explore the medium further, learning more advanced techniques.

The many artists and schools involved initially met at the MAC for a day’s training, to meet each other and all the artists and schools involved with the project. It was great to the meet other artists, some friendly faces I knew and some I met for the first time , and find out what they would be creating as part of the project – I thought this was a really nice touch, by organiser, Grace Mahar, we all got a real sense of the project as a whole from this. In collaboration, Lisa and I decided on a theme inspired by artists who worked with patterns in their practice and that we would commission some benches and produce some mosaic stepping stones for the school gardens. Luckily, through my membership at STEAMhouse, I’d got to know Jan Waterston, senior technician and woodwork specialist there, and asked if he could produce two benches with inlays for mosaic as part of the project. I was chuffed to bits when he agreed, Jan is the most talented designer! (see his work @ janwaterstondesigns or follow on insta @janwaterstondesigns

We began with a design session, exploring artists who used patterning in their work, we focused on Gaudi, M.C.Escher, Anni Albers, Keith Haring, Yayoi Kusama and Bridget Reilly. Inspired by these artists, the group began creating their own designs and I used these to draw up mosaic ‘cartoons’ or templates, ready for the production stage. On our next session I showed the students how to hand cut the vitreous glass, unglazed ceramic and porcelain tiles. One pupil in particular loved this, while he wasn’t keen on placing the tiles, he became or chief cutter, an essential part of the project! Over a few sessions we completed the mosaics ready for installation. The benches were collected and Lisa and I arranged an installation date, where I would show her the process I use. I use the ‘paper backed’ or ‘reverse’ method, which ensures a flat finish, obviously a safety consideration when using mosaic for seating or groundworks! We were lucky to get a lovely sunny day for this process, as we were installing outdoors. Lisa learned the process quickly and is confident to continue working with the methods she learned and will be able to continue to create more stepping stones to add to the collection, one of the aims of the project. The other creative workshops ran concurrently to ours and all the work created formed part of an exhibition at MAC. All pupils were able to come together to see both see their work in an established gallery environment but meet other students and artists involved in the project to see what they created. Lisa said they’d loved going to visit and see their and others work in such a great venue. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see the final exhibition or meet them there as I was working at Glastonbury Festival (another story) and the exhibition finished the day I returned. That was disappointing as I’d loved to have seen all the projects come together and see the pupils reaction to the whole thing, I’m really looking forward to seeing what the new selected artists for this years project produce with students! Please visit Common Ground Arts to find out more – here’s a link to a short film made by the talented Martin McNally @ Mixed Milk of our element of the project, you can see others on the website – https://www.commongroundarts.co.uk/2023