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Children’s Sculpture Courses: Adventures In Material & Space

Short-Courses for Children Aged 6 – 11
Warwick Preparatory School, Banbury Road, Warwick, CV34 6PL

Run in school half-term and holidays, this series of three-day short courses for children aged 6 – 11 focus on creative thinking and technical skills development in the expanded field of contemporary sculpture.

Adopting a sensorial approach, we will give the children freedom to form new relationships with materials via tactile activities that revolutionise their ideas into sculpture. Teaching how to communicate through the language of three-dimensional form, we will encourage expression through sculpture and design. By igniting imagination and playfulness, we will harness the children’s creativity by allowing freedom of thought in an enabling and inclusive environment, creating opportunities for discovery in materials and sculpture.

Led by Artist & Educator Lauren Cooke, this course is influenced by her experience and training in the Montessori pedagogy, with a focus on movement and sensorial stimuli.

February Half-Term: Light and Shade
Monday 17th – Wednesday 19th February 2025, 10 am – 4pm

Altering an area of the space using projection, we will play, problem solve and get creative using found objects, coloured acetate and mirrors which will become an enlarged environment; an immersive installation in the space.

Activities Include: Using coloured acetate and objects with an overhead projector; large scale drawing around projected images; using materials to make a sculpture based on what you see; making shadow sticks using wooden dowels and chosen materials; performing in the space created.

Three-day course 10 am – 4 pm = £135
Option for additional wraparound care at additional charge 9 – 10 am and 4 – 5 pm @ £7.50 per hour.
A number of free and half-price places are available to those on low income, thanks to support by Friends of the Arts Warwickshire. If the cost is stopping you signing your child up drop us an email summarising your personal circumstance and let’s see if we can help.

We are happy to accept children with additional needs. However it is essential that if your child has additional needs you get in touch with us to discuss the details of these in advance. This is to ensure a safe, productive and creative experience for all, given our staffing capacity. Failure to do this may mean we are unable to accept your child on the day.

Easter Holidays: Scale and Structure
Monday 14th – Wednesday 16th April 2025, 10 am – 4 pm

Architecture, assemblage and constructing large-scale sculptures. Investigating materials’ potential by constructing large or extremely small-scale sculptures; changing form and dimension of ready-made objects through repetition, wrapping, knotting, tearing, squeezing, hiding, bending, twisting or combining.

Activities Include: Den/shelter building; wrapping of objects hung in the space; bamboo constructions; outdoor installations using fabric, tube, rails and foam; covering objects.

Three-day course 10 am – 4 pm = £135
Option for additional wraparound care at additional charge 9 – 10 am and 4 – 5 pm @ £7.50 per hour.
A number of free and half-price places are available to those on low income, thanks to support by Friends of the Arts Warwickshire. If the cost is stopping you signing your child up drop us an email summarising your personal circumstance and let’s see if we can help.

May Half-Term: Material Connections
Monday 26th – Wednesday 28th May 2025, 10 am – 4 pm

Reigniting a connection to materials and the physical world, often lacking in the post-digital age, we will explore the potential of natural materials from clay, to straw, willow to bamboo. Through materials we will connect to traditional techniques and practices, look outwards to the natural designs of indigenous cultures and explore how we can make sculpture sensitively and sustainably, in tune with nature and treading lightly on this earth.

Activities Include: Exploring natural materials; imaginative tool making; crushing materials to make coloured pastes; mark-making with our hands, at a large scale; weaving; making large scale structures out of bamboo, wood and sticks; clay-sculpting, traditional clay mixing with our feet, making our own mudbricks.

Three-day course 10 am – 4 pm = £135
Option for additional wraparound care at additional charge 9 – 10 am and 4 – 5 pm @ £7.50 per hour.
A number of free and half-price places are available to those on low income, thanks to support by Friends of the Arts Warwickshire. If the cost is stopping you signing your child up drop us an email summarising your personal circumstance and let’s see if we can help.

Summer Holidays: Sculpture in Urban Space
Dates TBC

Focusing on urban mining – the process of reusing waste materials from the built urban environment – we will reimagine ready-made materials to create and construct sustainable sculptures, transforming materials, giving them new life and value and connecting us to place.

Activities Include: Five-minute assemblage sculptures (small) using readymade objects; imagining & creating tools that could extract valuable materials from landfill; collective assemblage sculpture (large) exploring our venue, gathering objects and transforming their function through placement, orientation and juxtaposition; tying, binding and other connection techniques; imaginative world/scenario-play in environments built using found materials.

Three-day course 10 am – 4 pm = £135
Option for additional wraparound care at additional charge 9 – 10 am and 4 – 5 pm @ £7.50 per hour.
A number of free and half-price places are available to those on low income, thanks to support by Friends of the Arts Warwickshire. If the cost is stopping you signing your child up drop us an email summarising your personal circumstance and let’s see if we can help.

Adventures in Material & Space is a programme of short-courses for Children taking place at Warwick Prep on a regular basis during the holidays. Every short-course is different with new activities, materials and process introduced each time. Open to all.

Children will need to bring: a packed lunch, snacks, water bottle and clothes they can get messy in. Strictly no nuts please. (Well in the food, in the children it is actively encouraged!)

Booking – Please provide all the required information on checkout:
Your Name
Emergency Contact Number
Child’s Name
D.O.B
Any additional access needs or requirements.

N.B. A sibling discount is available on additional tickets if parents/carers buy one full price ticket at the same time. Please enquire.

Maximum 16 children with two artist-educator members of staff.

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