Santas Gotto

An old Friend from a local business got in touch recently to ask if I could do something with the students in the second level school for a santa's grotto. So we got to work striping back stage flats which were covered in hard board and stretched nylon until we has the bare frames. 

     

 Once we had the frames exposed we started to cover them in large pieces of clean cardboard.

Painted the base coat on cut and framed both a window and a fire place and finished it off with chalk pastel. 

A bit of lighting always helps to set the christmas tone 

And two of the biggest elfs ive ever seen in my life. 

"Alice in Blanchardstown" Project

Alice in Blanchardstown Project

HISTORY

 The ‘Alice in Blanchardstown’ Project was a tribute to Alice in wonderland which in 2015 celebrated its 150^th Anniversary of publication. As you a likely to know already the Reverend Charles Dodgson, a very shy and very reserved maths professor better known as Lewis Carrol wrote the original story in 1862. Its main character was inspired by the real life Alice Lidell the daughter of the Dean of christ church college which Carrol worked in. Carrol asked John Tenniel, an illustrator who work for punch magazine at the time, to illustrate the book and the rest is history.

PROJECT

 I began working on ‘Alice in Blanchardstown’ in summer 2017 as part of a summer project. Funding for the materials was successfully applied for from the 'Creative Ireland' grant scheme managed by the local Council. this allowed me to continue the work with the schools I work in.

  

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 Transition year students got busy from September 2017 putting together characters, cards and props together for display in a parade. I worked closely with Mary Quinn without whose assistance I couldn't have seen a project of this scale through to the end.

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ONE BOOK 

There was a ‘One Book One Community’ element to the project, for this we used a version written by Susie Linn and illustrated by Alexandra Ball with a lot of help we found enough copies to get around the five schools who participated in the project. The book having been published itself to mark 150 years of Alice makes the story accessible to younger generation and is a great bedtime read. 

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First full dress rehearsal 

One Freezing cold day in March

Tim O’Connor helped with percussion and set up a marching band in the primary school with Drums, kazoos and vuvuzelas.

                           

a number of teachers including Katy and Niamh doyle came together to make fantastic hats, umbrella mushrooms and wild and interesting alice related paraphernalia.

 

The project was a huge pleasure to work on, if you want any more info on it you can click here to go to the facebook page.