Involving young people in peatland work - Art on the Moss
Do
Site
Type of work
Giving children from a nearby school the opportunity to
explore part of a peatbog with artists. Through drawings and
digital photographs made on the peatland, then developed later
in different ways, the children created a range of visual and
musical ways of sharing their enthusiasm for the bog with the
wider community.
Work details
Two artists - Janie Nicoll and Andrew Mackenzie, were
hired to take children (age range from 4 to 12) from Thornhilll
Primary School in the Lomond and Rural Stirling
Leader+ area, Scotland, on an autumn trip to Flanders Moss.
This was followed by work in the classroom, aided by the
artists and the teachers from the school (74 pupils in total in
the school). The project was managed by David Pickett, site
manger of
Flanders Moss National Nature
Reserve for Scottish
Natural Heritage (SNH). It was a direct result of seeing
work involving artists on the Lough Boora
Peatlands during the
first of two Irish workshops in the LEADER+ peatland
project.
- Younger children worked with one artist, older with the other artist
- Older children: Landscape-style drawings made at first, followed by making more detailed drawings of plants, assisted by photographs taken by the children themselves
- Younger children: encouraged to explore and make use of all the different kinds of colours they encountered.
- All children given access to a digital camera to take pictures during part of the field visit
- In classroom, sketches and photographs used to develop visual ideas, including through photo-montage and collage
- Working with their music teacher and cello teacher, the children composed and performed their own peatland song
- A DVD was made to communicate the childrens' enthusiasm for the peatland to the wider community
Some comments from the children
"I never expected the bog to be that big"
"The colours was amazing - different shades of green, yellow, brown and red"
"I saw star moss and reindeer moss and magnum moss"
"My friend and I found a mushroom city"
Feedback from the artists
Janie Nicoll: "Because it was autumn, the colours were
absolutely fantastic, and I think that came across in their
drawings and photographs. For me, as an artist, it was a really
exciting project to be involved in. It's opened my eyes
to how a peatbog is an incredible resource of visual
imagery."
Feedback from the head teacher
Glenys Jones: "Until very recently, the Moss itself had been inaccessible to most people. The formation of the boardwalk and the slate path (through the LEADER+ peatland project) made it much more accessible and less dangerous for the children to visit.
"The project was cross-curricular in every sense of the word. It involved environmental studies, science, language, art, music. It brought learning through discovery to life."