Down by the river

Schools

Our 'Kurt Jackson: River' exhibition (27 March to 10 July 2010) was incredibly popular with schools. Kurt Jackson is studied by many GCSE and A-Level students, and our local schools were very keen to bring their students into the Museum to experience the work first-hand. As ever, our Learning Team was on hand to provide further insight into the work, and to encourage the students to experiment with their sketchbooks. We also produced a detailed teacher’s pack to support the exhibition, which can be downloaded from the Kurt Jackson: River resources page.

Working with groups

We also had visits from our Home Educators group, whose art work you can see on our Flickr page, and Longcause Community Special School, whose art work you can also view on our Flickr page. Many local primary schools also visited – what an experience for the children at such a young age!

It was an exciting exhibition to work with on so many levels. We worked with The Imaginators, our pre-school group, The Highbury Trust, a day centre for adults with physical and learning disabilities and our Women’s Traditional Craft Group, a drop-in group for adults interested in all things handmade, to create a large collaborative collaged wall hanging. You can see photos of their finished work on our Flickr page.

Workshops and talks

We based some of our family workshops around the exhibition, including a collaborative workshop where all our family visitors created a huge 12 metre long mixed-media river. View the photos of this workshop on our Flickr page.

Possibly the most exciting event to take place around the exhibition was a visit by Kurt Jackson himself. Students from Plymouth College of Art, Eggbuckland Community College, Plymouth High School for Girls, and a few University of Plymouth students on our Young Explainers programme were given a talk about the inspiration behind his work, and were read passages of his writings. They were also the very first people in the world to see a new short film about Kurt Jackson’s involvement with the Glastonbury Festival. Some pictures of the artist giving his talk, and a further public talk that took place later in the day can be seen on our Flickr page.