Whole School Collaborative Art Projects

Working towards our Arts Mark at Dashwood Banbury Academy, we worked with local artist, Emily Cooling, on a whole school project to create a lantern tree to welcome pupils, staff and visitors to our school. Funded by Better Lives Through Culture every pupil contributed to this large-scale awe-inspiring project. The project focused on collaboration to support mental wellbeing and with every child working om the project, a sense of working together was truly embedded. Working with woven willow to produce the structure, we created a lantern style tree. Each pupil in the school also created a leaf for the tree working with a range of colours, paint and pen.

There has been a wonderful sense of awe and wonder throughout the school (pupils and staff alike):

‘Woah that is so amazing!’ 

‘It’s huge!’ 

‘Which leaf did you make? I made the green and orange ones.’ 

‘I helped make that branch’ 

‘I did that part there!’ 

‘Gluing the tissue was so fun and sticky. I loved it!’ 

‘It has been an amazing project to be involved in, my class have loved it!’

– Year 2 teacher

‘The children have learned so many new skills and have a had so many new opportunities that they may not otherwise have had. The project has allowed them to be part of creating something large scale and produce an outcome that inspires awe and wonder. They have learned how to weave willow using their knowledge of angles, proportion and fractions. They have also learned how to create a tissue skin and blend colours when painting to create different effects’.

-Year 5 teacher

Take a look below at some of the best bits from across the project!