Circular STEAM with TY's

During this BLAST arts residency, I worked with Transition Year pupils at Kilydesert Post Primary School on an environmental art project developed in collaboration with their teachers and the pupils themselves. Exploring climate change and sustainable living, we combined artistic experimentation with scientific enquiry, alongside the pupils’ learning about climate change in their science lessons.

I found the TY pupils perceptive, informed and wonderfully imaginative. Our discussions about rising sea levels and increasingly unpredictable weather inspired them to create futuristic Icelandic villages using ice, waste cardboard and playdough. Working in groups, they built homes and dams, then watched as the ice melted in real time, testing the resilience of their designs. Some recognised the advantages of building on higher ground, while others raised their villages on platforms supported by stilts.

In our next session, we explored the causes of climate change and the need to move away from fossil fuels. Using the many boxes and containers the pupils had collected for reuse, they imagined and constructed environmentally friendly vehicles and homes of the future. Their inventive models included electric and solar-powered cars and tractors, magnetic trains, hydro-powered boats, and homes powered by wind and sunlight. A particular highlight was watching the pupils climb into their creations and enthusiastically explain their green credentials.

To bring the residency to a playful close, the pupils worked in pairs to create masks inspired by contemporary teenage culture. Their witty, colourful and wonderfully eccentric designs became the starting point for performances, as they put on their masks and stepped into character. With sharp humour and sarcasm, they offered thoughtful critiques of the consumerism, pressures around body image and digital culture that shape their lives.

Throughout the residency, the pupils brought curiosity, imagination and humour to complex environmental and social questions, using art to explore both the world they inhabit and the futures they would like to create.

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