A new year starts… and so does our new group!
Manet is back! Over the next 12 weeks, Manet’s Portrait of Fanny Mlle Claus, will be inspiring young people to be creative in a wide variety of ways: music, sketching, collage, digital animation, video, jewellery, painting, creative writing… we are all anticipating a fun 3 months!
This project will be based at The Highfield Unit, at the Warneford Hospital in Oxford. Highfield is an acute Mental Health ward for young people (up to 18 years) and we are working with the school (part of Oxfordshire Hospitals School, Oxfordshire County Council). Highfield is a very special place with extremely dedicated staff and inspiring young people. The school recognises the importance of learning in a caring, achieving environment as fundamental to recovery and we are delighted to be able to be part of the process.
Here’s some of the amazing team (caught during our session) that are supporting the young people over the next 12 weeks.
So, the project has started via a ‘pop up museum’: a fun, hands-on introduction to the Ashmolean and Manet’s portrait – a virtual tour of this vast museum punctuated with handling objects thousands of years old. The young people’s knowledge of the artefacts and human history was impressive to say the least! They created these collages from images of the museum.
Our next session is ‘Meet the Sitter’ – an actress is taking on Fanny Claus’ persona to give the young people the opportunity to ask her questions about who she is, what Manet is like, when the 19th Century is like. But I do wonder, what will they ask her?