Celebrating ART NOW with Castle School

3 February 2023

Students from Castle School, an inclusive school supporting SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) students, have worked with Kettle’s Yard and artist in residence, Georgia Akbar to collectively develop a new artwork for the school.

Over the last year and a half the students have visited Kettle’s Yard for inspiration and collaborated with Georgia by taking part in experimental and creative workshops. The students have been particularly inspired by the light, shadows and windows in the Kettle’s Yard House. From these workshops and visits to the House, the students have created a final artwork and considered its location in the school and how it can be interacted with by other people.

The workshops included experimenting with lemons, film-making, drawing shapes on windows, and exploring light and shadows with torches and reflections.

Earlier this week we visited Castle School to see the final artwork, which is a participatory piece inspired by the play of light and windows in the Kettle’s Yard House. The artwork encourages visitors to look up, to interact and play with light and notice how light can change the nature or appearance of a work or space.

The students have combined their interest in film-making, projection, painting, drawing and installation to create the final artwork situated within the school hall.

The artwork is on display during the school’s annual celebration of creativity – WonderWeek (30 January – 3 February 2023) – and following this the work will be displayed at Kettle’s Yard for Twilight at the Museums on Thursday 16 February, 4.30 – 6.30pm. Visitors are welcome to explore the work during this free event. Following the Twilight event, Castle School will permanently display the artwork at their school as a proud legacy of this project.

It was really good. I like how it has all come together as one and everyone has done their own design [to contribute to the final artwork].

— One of the students from Castle School who took part in the project

This has been such an amazing project. The project has been so accessible for our students, with each one taking their own unique learning and inspiration from a shared stimulus. Georgia Akbar has facilitated this with her creative flair, attention to detail and positive relationships with each of our students. We are so grateful to Georgia, Kettle’s Yard, the Ragdoll Foundation, and everyone that has supported the project, it is a great creative partnership.