From mid-October to mid November, The Model will be working with local primary and secondary schools from Sligo alongside our current exhibition Reverse Pedagogy. Below we hear from two people involved in the project so far, Artist Andy Parsons and teacher Anne-Marie Watters.

Artist Andy Parsons;

‘The Reverse Pedagogy Schools Programme takes two of the key themes of the the show as its starting points; collaborative working and play as art. The young people visiting the gallery have been given a short tour and a chance to visit the Fairy disco, then asked to throw a giant cardboard dice to move along a collage board game spanning three of the gallery’s downstairs rooms.

The collage party then begins with a race against time to fill in the area of floor space space they have landed on in an hour. The project aims to create the same sense of anarchic fun as the exhibition while introducing young people to art that challenges a great number of conventions.’

Facilitator Anne Marie Watters spoke about the experience for the children;

‘The children really had a good time in the workshops, the different age groups and schools made it more interesting.

The whole Fairy room in the gallery seemed to connect better with the primary school children and their teachers also.

They were more open to suggestion, and the newspaper and magazine collages seemed to work better than just sticking to colored pieces of paper and material. It meant they had to think more about what images to use, where to position them and how to incorporate it into the whole picture.

By making it into a game so the children really got involved in it was a brilliant idea. You determined where you were by throwing the dice and the used that as you space to use in what ever way you wanted. Be it by using the whole space, using parts of it or not much at all. It was good to see how they worked together whether in pairs or in groups. I really had fun in the collage party, and the artist Andy Parsons is great to work with too. He brings all his sense of adventure and enthusiasm into the workshops.’

Reverse Pedagogy runs until November 22nd at The Model Satellite, Castle Street, Sligo.