Thursday, 1 July 2010

For the Love of Books - Salisbury Arts Festival

June 3rd was hot and sunny compared to the grey rainy day before, and Creative Creatures arrived early at Salisbury Arts Centre to set up for For the Love of Books, a writing and craft workshop in association with Salisbury Arts Festival. 

Eleven children were joining us to discuss and explore the magic of books, working out what exactly appeals to us about them, what makes us want to read them, and then beginning the exciting task of deisgning and making our own!

 
It was a busy but fun morning as students stitched their papers together, marbled or decorated endpapers and then began making the hard back covers for their books. 
 
Every student came up with their own unique designs to reflect their own personality, or favourite genre. With guidance from the tutors they worked on putting together their very own book.
 

We were very impressed by the enthusiam and imagination of everyone there, and as you can see they produced some fantastic results.
 
There's a real mix of ideas, from real-life fiction, to fantasy or even just a notebook for thoughts and ideas. 
 

They were all different and original.
 


In the afternoon we concentrated on the art of writing, exploring different techniques such as sense writing, similies, metaphors and the importance of language, and then the students were able to let their words flow and there was silence in the room, aside from the happy scribbling sound of pens to paper.
 

It was a most enjoyable day, we had great fun, and we're pretty sure everyone else did too!

 

Salisbury Arts Festival 2nd June - The Big Play

2nd June was a wet and grey day, but it didn't deter the many people who came to Salisbury to enjoy the Big Play in the Park as part of Salisbury Arts Festival. 
















Creative Creatures were there too; tying in with the theme of PLAY children drew postcards of things they associate with playing and created characters of themselves that could be used in a story.















On the back of their characters they wrote all the things that make them unique, for example what food they like, and of course what games they like to play!











We had some wonderful characters and postcards made - they all had lots of personality and charm. We could really imagine them becoming characters in a story.



















It was a busy busy day, but a good time was had by all!






Thursday, 17 June 2010

Creating Creatures at Leeson House 28th - 30th May 2010

We took a lot of photos on this weekend, everyone's work was so interesting we just had to keep snapping! Here's a selection of our favourite pics, starting with a couple of the skeleton building stage of creature creation:






Exploring and investigating at Durlston Country Park:



Thinking about camoflage and characteristics unique to these fantasy characters:

A Fither, Jinx the Cloud Mermaid, a Mini-DragonDraco, a Drognat and a Daguet:










Fact files full of information, samples and pictures to help study the amazing creatures created over the weekend:




Cryptozoologists work completed! Or is it...

Creating Creatures at Leeson House 21st-23rd May 2010

Some snaps from an overflow Creating Creatures course, making mystical beasts from mod-roc and writing adventurous tales about them. Here's the creatures being constructed:


Crytozoologists adventuring (and taking a break!):

Back to Leeson House to write stories and create fact files:


Blast the underwater dragon; a medumerlien; and a block dragon: