Chair Project
This is the final selection of the chair designs for our upcycling chair project. The next step is the delivery of the chairs to every classroom and then the artists are coming in to work with each class.
Chair Design Edited Shortlist
Griffith Barracks school has been involved with the Arts Council’s national Creative Schools Project since its initiation in 2018. We worked with our appointed facilitator, Sarah Fitzgibbon for three years to help us progress and maintain a creative approach in everything that we do.
Creative Schools is a flagship initiative of the Creative Ireland Programme to enable the creative potential of every child. Creative Schools is led by the Arts Council in partnership with the Department of Education and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.
The Creative Schools Team is made up of representatives from classes 3rd to 6th (one girl and one boy, or two children, regardless of gender as the classes progress). It is currently managed by Jenny McCrohan, but there are many more teachers and children involved.
A child has only one chance to be on the Student Dáil or Green Council in their school lifetime, but currently it is still possible to be on either the Student Dáil or Green Council and to be elected on to the Creative Schools Committee in another year.
Previously the Creative Schools Committee has surveyed children to see what it is that we want to do creatively in school.
We brought in many initiatives, such as a huge lego gathering operation. We organised a bread making workshop with the help of Gaillot and Gray and have looked into pickling with the people from Fumbally.
The Creative Schools Team made and gathered many orgami butterflies, from 1st Class to 6th Class, for our school library display in collaboration with parents Monika and Agnieszka who work in our school library. The library was then officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alison Gililand in May 2022 with the Creative Schools Team in attendance.
The Creative Schools Committee has been involved in the production of our GBMDS Poetry Anthology 2020, when every child received a copy of the book.
Creative Schools Children’s Team has worked with the teachers in developing a whole school wide survey about the things that our children want to do creatively.
Our children really want to work collaboratively and to have whole school projects.
We want more film making and 5th Class was part of the BLAST funded project which saw the making of two short films about 1922, these films were shown on Culture Night 2022.
For the past two years, Creative Schools has brought together work from all classes, JI – 6th and had an exhibition of creative work hung in the corridor of our school in May / June. This work has included photos of Aistear, photos of Drama workshops, poetry, writing samples and visual art.
In 2019 the adult and children developed a plan for creative projects in the school and have also developed an assessment rubric (plan) for project work, encouraging the use of creative elements in all our project work; so that in a project presentation, a child might include music or drama or visual arts in their presentations.
2022-’23 elections take place in October and the elected Creative Schools Team, will meet once a month to talk about how we can approach things creatively.
We have applied for funding to upcycle one wooden school chair per class, from JI – 6th Class, with the help of an artist. This will be a class project and each child will have the opportunity to put forward their own idea for the chair. It will be the job of the Creative Schools Team to work with the artist and to explain to each class, the steps that are involved.
We will also be involved in the ordering of new library books for our School Library and our individual Class libraries. We will make a form for the children to complete as part of their homework about their favourite books.
A much-loved artwork, by artist Fuchsia MacAree in our main reception
