See You Outside

The Open Air School Is Reborn For One Day

 
Buck Wood has a long and fascinating history.  One hundred years ago in 1908, an Open Air School was opened in the woods to provide a healthy environment for children suffering from poverty and illness. 
For over 30 years the woods gave health and happiness to thousands of children, with open-fronted classrooms and access to fresh air at all times.

A group of people called The Friends Of Buck Wood have done a great job of clearing away all the undergrowth on the site of the old school and revealing the actual spot where the classrooms used to be.
To find out more about the old school you can click the link ‘Buck Wood Open Air School’ under the photo albums in the right hand panel, where it says ‘Things we like’.

Our See You Outside project is all about learning to do art outdoors, and so we just had to take the opportunity to bring the Open Air School back to life for a brief moment and to capture the wonderful atmosphere of Buck Wood.  Like the ephemeral mayfly that lives for one day only, our outdoor printmaking classroom came into being for just a few hours last Friday.  Angie and Viv set up a gazebo on the old school site, followed by our portable etching press, work table and equipment.

Once again we were lucky with the weather and our young people from Salt Grammar School were able to take full advantage of the beautiful woods as inspiration for their Intaglio printmaking.  The group worked really hard, rising to the challenge of learning a new and complex skill, and their drypoint prints all turned out to be excellent and surprisingly varied.  The open air printmaking was a complete success!

Message In A Bottle

The children from Brackenhill Primary School have now finished all their art workshops with Angie and Viv.
They will still be contributing to this site and of course they will be attending our celebration event on Friday 11th July.

We thought it would be nice if the Brackenhill children could send a message to Salt Grammar School, telling about their experiences of making art outside.  Seeing as Ogden Water is a reservoir that provides drinking water to the local area, it seemed a great idea to send the messages in a water bottle, so thats what we did during the final art session at school.  The children wrote their messages in blue pen on strips of tracing paper to symbolise the flow of water and we made a label with a map of the reservoir and some information about the project.  Here's a couple of pictures of the bottle, you can just see the message strips inside.

 
                         


  

A Magical Day In Buck Wood

Thursday 8th May saw our group of 11 young people from Salt Grammar School making their first trip to Buck Wood in Thackley with Angie and Viv, along with Arts Project Officer Mrs Graham, and Dr Alvin, a local historian and Chair of the 'Friends of Buck Wood'.

Buck Wood is a wonderful green space with a very interesting past, and on Thursday, the fabulous warm sunny weather turned it into a magical outdoor art classroom.  There will be more information about Buck Wood's history in a later post and plenty more pictures of the artwork we made.  In the meantime, here are some photos that hopefully capture the spirit of our day outside.

The Edge of the Water

Dry stone walls and wooden fences are a feature of Ogden Reservoir.  We have enjoyed seeing the blue and grey water peeking over the top of a stone wall or through the slats of a wooden fence.  The water looks especially beautiful when the sun glitters and gleams on the dark surface.

Lukman has captured the rough wooden planks of the fence in this painting.

Nadia had never used a quill pen before but she has made a good drawing of the old stone wall and the trees across the water.

More Ogden Artwork from Brackenhill Children

The Ogden Water Sketchbooks are almost full and have turned out brilliantly with lots of beautiful paintings and drawings.  Angie and Viv are very impressed with the artworks especially when you realise that they were mostly created outside, often with only old tree trunks for tables and sometimes it was quite windy, chilly and damp.  These wonderful sketchbooks show that working out of doors, surrounded by nature is a great experience and everyone should try it.  You will notice loads of new colours, textures, sounds and smells.

Saffiyah's  lively reservoir spreads across two pages of her sketchbook.

This cheerful goose is by Noriea - she has used a goose quill pen to draw with.

Hanah has observed carefully the different trees and plants along the reservoir bank.

 

Earth Paint Rabbits from Ogden Water

Here is a selection of excellent rabbit pictures created with the amazing earth paint from Ogden Water.

      

       
       Obeid has made a very colourful painting of a rabbit in the sunshine.

      

      
       Nayyir's rabbit has a wonderful shy face.

      
       This rabbit by Zain looks a bit angry! 

Hello Salt Grammar School

Exciting news!  A new school is joining the See You Outside Project on Thursday.  Young people from Salt Grammar School are coming on an outdoor art trip with Viv and Angie to Buck Wood in Bradford.  The children from Brackenhill Primary School say ‘HELLO ‘ and hope the trip has good weather.  Next week the Ogden Water group will be sending a special message in a bottle from Brackenhill to Salt school, but before then they say ‘have a look at the photo albums and see what we've been doing’.

This is what Buck Wood looks like right now: 

                   

The fresh new leaves are like green lace and drifts of bluebells are coming out all around the wood.

Return To Ogden Water

Our second visit to Ogden Water was a great success.  The weather forecast was for plenty of rain and even hail so we felt very lucky to have lots of lovely sunshine instead!  We were able to work outside all day.

To begin with, we made a special kind of lovely brown paint.  A few weeks ago Angie and Viv collected some earth from beside the reservoir.  The earth was dried out and sieved to get rid of bits of grass and lumps.  Then we ground the earth in a mortar and pestle. Everyone took a turn at grinding the earth to a fine powder.  After that we added some Gum Arabic to bind the powdered earth into paint.  We also put in some water to dilute it and a drop of lavender oil to make the paint smell nice.

There are lots of wild rabbits at Ogden Reservoir. You can see them all the time running around and nibbling on the grass.  We all know that the wild rabbits live in holes in the ground and so we thought it would be a good idea to use the brown earth paint to make pictures of the rabbits in our sketchbooks.  It was fun and everyone enjoyed looking closely at the bunnies.

Here is a selection from the feedback comments made by the children at the end of the day.