Erasmus+

Make A Book Exhibition: Creativity & Collaboration-

Anvee Singh

Youthful minds harbour the deepest wells of creativity, which is why it is important to make sure that such minds are given the opportunity to outstretch their limits. Projects like “Make A Book” help students to tap into their artistic sides and engage them in something they wouldn't do otherwise in their usual school subjects. Make A Book promotes the significance of literacy, as students witness and learn all that goes into the fabrication of a book. It gives students the opportunity to present their hard work to an audience, and gives them confidence in their work, and today I was part of this audience at the Make A Book Exhibition.

Ms. Flynn, the school librarian, was kind enough to let me tread along with the group of people who were presenting their book in The Plaza Hotel in Tallaght. Each school had their own stand in the hall, with a pin board to display their book and all that went into it. The schools that were present were, my own, St. Aidan’s Community School, Kylemore College, Presentation Secondary School and Holy Family.

Four students from Transition Year were chosen for the Erasmus trip to Romania back in November in my school. For their project, they worked with author Alan Nolan along with other students from Romania, Portugal and Turkey, to create the book “Liveable Earth”, featuring short stories all about sustainability and the environment. Sammy Barry and Mathew Kalvin presented their book today. “The concept of the book started in first year when we made a book called Viral Planet, which was centered around Covid and how instead of making people infected with the virus sick, it gave them superpowers” informed Sammy. Mathew talked of his Erasmus experience, and when asked what his favourite part was, he said, “the best part was the people.”

Kylemore College made short stop motion movies for theirs. They displayed all their different artworks, telling various stories through illustrations. Hayden confidently presented the project, “all the characters have little bits stuck around with pins so they can move.” It took a full school day, which is six hours to film the final films. Animator Gary Rosborough helped the students create the characters, taught them all about stop motion animation and also compiled the films together. The students enjoyed creating their own characters, “it’s different than looking at pictures, you can actually move them around”, explained Hayden when asked what was interesting about their project.

Now onto Presentation Secondary School, which was my personal favourite. Their project was named “Behind The Closed Door”, and their idea was that “every door is a story waiting to be told.” They produced a large thick book, containing photographs of the students’ doors of choice, and the pages were cut in a way that you could open the flap of the door and be met with a brief story, poem or piece of writing about that specific door, as one of the students best described it, “each person had to share a story, a history, a mystery or a memory related to a door.” I really liked this concept and think it was very original and well thought out, paired with beautiful visuals and layout, all in all producing pages seeping with vibrancy and creativity.

Holy Family’s was all about the book Adam’s Starling by Gillian Perdue. It tells the story of a boy getting bullied, who becomes friends with a starling. The theme was anti bullying and the school made posters with inspiring quotes like, “stick up for yourself!” They made a poster which featured starlings on it and behind each starling, a student wrote what they were greatful for.

After the presentation was over, we played a game of human bingo, which had us walking around the room, talking to people to find out more about them. I’m tempted to skip this part because unfortunately I did not win anything, but I digress.

The last activity of the day was to exercise our creativity and to get us thinking. It was creating something, anything, a poem, an artwork, a film, a song about the “stimulus”, which was the object given to us in a bag with other materials which we could work with, such as coloured paper, markers, pipe cleaners, stickers, glue, scissors and so on. The stimulus buried in our bag was a cup with a tea bag and packets of sugar, to shorten it, a cuppa tea. But the catch was, we had a total of fifteen tiny minutes to produce this creation. We sat there contemplating, and me stressing while doing so, until someone said “you can make a teapot”. I wasn’t in the position to think on it, time wise, so I grabbed the pipe cleaners and got to work. We each took two pipe cleaners, tying them together to form a circle. We intertwined the circles to create a sphere, the body of the tea pot. We also made the handle and spout and added it onto the piece. We managed to make it stand (limply) using glue and blue tack. We stuffed the teapot with a crumpled orange sheet, which was the closest colour we had to that of actual tea. Soon we were done, surprisingly with seven minutes to spare. “You guys should make a stop motion”, prompted Mr. Bible. Yeah, why not? We made a 28 second long stop motion film of the teapot being brought in, the water in the teapot changing from crumpled blue paper to crumpled orange paper when the tea bag infiltrated it, and then the tea being poured into our stimulus, the cup, blowing hot white steam. Now, in my biased opinion we were the best out of everyone else, especially given the tight time limit we received and how we managed to flesh out two separate pieces of art in that duration.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed today and think it was a great way to bring people together and celebrate creativity, originality and expression. I hope the Make A Book project keeps on giving students the opportunity to create, because what young people have to say, matters.

St. Aidan's Community School have been chosen to take part in a number of European Union funded project called Erasmus+. The Erasmus+ project links us with schools from all over Europe from Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Lithuania, Turkey and Denmark.

The projects are always very educational and give St. Aidan's students a chance to learn more about their European neighbours!

Every second mobility we take some lucky students with us. Erasmus+ is important for our teachers as well. It gives us opportunities to learn from and make connections with educators across Europe. It develops our own cultural awareness and enhances our sense of belonging to a European community.

Take a look at a recent mobility with students to Italy in May 2019 on the Eramsus+ Eurostories Project.