What a fantastic day we had at Horndon on the Hill Primary School in Thurrock, Essex on Monday 4th October.
It was the first of our Trailblazers Art and Creativity Days this year with the Royal Opera House Bridge for Arts Council England, which is all made possible by funding from The National Lottery.
And what better way to kick off World Space Week too.
Read more about the day and see an epic film or just go ahead and book one for your school now here
Film of the day (long version at bottom of page)
Our #MissionToMars21 Tour is all part of our campaign to help inspire a million children and young people to find their passion, their art and learn the skills they’ll need - like collaboration, communication and creativity - if they are to be among the million people Elon Musk has said he wants to take to Mars in thirty years time.
We first ran it at our Art Town Takeover this summer at Camp Bestival and are now taking it to schools across the country.
Here’s a short version of a film of the day with a longer one at the bottom of this page.
Arrival
As they arrived for school, the children were as surprised to see a Starship in the school grounds as we were to see all the cardboard they’d brought in for our #ARTofCARDBOARD workshop. Wowzas!
ACTION PACKED ASSEMBLY
We set up our green screen studio and live streamed an assembly about aiming high with art to the whole school and Year 5 who were in the hall and to family homes on a secure YouTube link.
Everyone watching the live stream thought Nick was standing in the shadow of a 150 foot high Starship on a cardboard model of a Mars Base Camp but everyone in the hall knew he was just standing in front of a green screen!
This green screen and computer graphics technology was funded by an emergency Covid 19 grant from Arts Council England and Culture Recovery Fund grant from the government’s DCMS department and has allowed STEAM Co. to live stream community arts events and festivals through lockdown and even now when not all children can go in the hall for assembly and families can’t yet join in either.
The grand finale at the end of the day saw a dynamite rocket launched in the school playing field which helped us get some great video clips to make the film below of the 150 foot high cardboard Starship take off to inspire everyone to aim higher than high!
Creative activities
After the assembly Year 1 and 5 got the chance to make and fire paper air rockets as well as enjoy a cardboard modelling workshop, using a great new system we’ve got our hands on that lets you saw, fold and screw cardboard together to amke anything your imagination can come up with.
Staying with the space theme we made space helmets, Mars landers, rockets, base camps and even a giant model of Mars itself!
MAKE IT WITH MAKEDO
A lot of people have asked us about the little blue screws we’re now using in our cardboard modelling sessions. We first came across it 8 years ago when we launched the Global Cardboard Challenge in the UK and have struggled to find it since.
We recently tracked it down in Australia and are delighted that Nick is the UK Ambassador for MakeDo and that STEAM Co. is now able to sell it.
If you want a set and want to help us by resisting the urge to save a few pennies with free P&P elsewhere, do please buy some from us.
We have solo starters sets for home and collaborative class sizes sets for schools.
FILM of the day
Here’s a longer version of the above film of the day.
Do get in touch if you’d like us to bring thsi inspiring and engaging day to your school community.
Find out more about the #MissionToMars21 Tour here