What could you do if you had a big stone head in your playground?

CAST has funding to take part in a national arts project called ‘Giants in the Forest’ and has offered primary schools the chance to take part in an Argyll and Bute off-shoot. To date we have 71 primary schools signed up to take part. Each school is being sent a large ceramic ‘Easter Island’ head, which can be planted up with seedlings/plants of their choice. A bag of compost is also being supplied.

GITF involves enormous heads being erected in woodland in Argyll as well as Borders and Dumfries and Galloway. These are being planted up with indigenous growth from the surrounding habitat and used as a catalyst for a wide variety of arts and education events. The national project is run by ‘vision mechanics’. Lochgilphead Joint Campus pupils and Lochgilphead Resource Centre clients will be visiting the sites as well as pupils on Mull. The sites in Argyll are Calgary Arts in Nature, by Dervaig, Isle of Mull (click HERE for link) 
and Moine Mhor National Nature reserve (car park is situated 2 miles south of Kilmartin on B8025.) Click HERE for info.

It is up to each school where they put their stone head, what grows in it (florals, perennials, edibles) and whether the heads are used by a specific year group or teacher. It can also be used to augment existing planting schemes. Initial planting possibilities could include: 
’Food for Thought’ an edible garden, a mini sensory garden. 
Minibeast homes. Rainbow garden, Structural shapes, Willow weaving.

Along with the head schools will also receive 3 expressive arts tasks. Each task will be in a special envelope which can be opened by the pupils and has either literacy, numeracy or health and wellbeing embedded in the task. There will also be a list of suggested cross-curricular themes and creative learning ideas for using the heads.

If you have stories and images of what your head has been involved in, please encourage your pupils to contribute to this new sharing blog ‘Sharing Argyll Learning’ and help build an authority-wide resource of activities for future reference. Please ask them to send text (up to approx 400 words) and a few images to:
saladmin@ea.argyll-bute.sch.uk
 
For any other info, please get in touch.
fiona.blakey@ea.argyll-bute.sch.uk

The heads and compost have been supplied by Corachie Clematis Garden Plants, Taynuilt.
Thanks go to them for all their invaluable help.