A couple of weeks back, I spent a day in Rawlins Community College in Quorn in Leicestershire. As ever with events like these, you are never quite sure how the day will pan out, not in terms of what the kids are capable of, as they are generally great, but more in terms of what facilities and staff help that you are going to get on the day. As it turned out, when I arrived, there were no tables to put the stone on, not a good start . There were about 30 visiting artists at the college that day so things were pretty chaotic but luckily I managed to nab the caretaker who plucked some relatively sturdy old exam desks out of thin air. The room I was allocated was the training room for their brick laying courses, it does not sound glamorous but ideal for knocking lumps of rock about. I took 10 stones into the college and wanted the kids to carve a gargoyle. The day was split into 3 x one and a half hour sessions with 10 kids per session. The 1st 10 had the job of designing the gargoyle and starting the carving, the next 10 had the long slog in the middle and the last lot had the job of finishing the work, standing back and basking in the glory of their creation. All of the kids were brilliant, an hour and a half is a long time to be chiselling when you have never done it before but no-one go bored or tired and they all saw their session through to the end. Below is a pic of the finishd gargoyles. Probably the best bit of the day was when the the kids who attended the 1st session returned to see how their sculptures ended up. Some of them were completely unrecognisable ( the gargoyles not the kids) whereas others had had kept their form throughout the day. The college will keep the carvings and they should make for great little features around the college for years to come.As for the teacher who was meant to be helping ? The kids needed no looking after as they were so engrossed with their carving that he was able to spend the day carving his own gargoyle. He really got into it and made a super piece of work !
10 Gragoyles at Rawlins Community College
Adrian Chiles and Gary Lineker.
I carry out many projects like this, sometimes as part of public art project or often during a project such as the Rawlins one. There is a PDF document on www.chisel-it.co.uk which outlines a few ways of running a stone carving session in a school and gives an idea of prices.