Group of children sitting at a table in The Maxwell Centre's community garden

Learning

A summer of printing and play with DCA's Learning team

A look back at workshops across the city and activities at DCA

Our Learning team had a busy summer taking creativity activities out to gardens and parks across the city, as well as welcoming visitors to DCA for screenings, workshops and tours.

The summer holidays were spent hosting sessions all over Dundee, in partnership with ScrapAntics, Stobswell and Maryfield CLD teams, The Maxwell Centre, University of Dundee Botanic Gardens and Dundee Science Centre, including an afternoon at DCA to celebrate Playday 2024. The fun and creativity continued even after the schools went back with our annual Art & Design Pupil Conference Days in September.

Here we take a look back at what the team got up to and some of the fantastic artwork produced by children, families and community groups over the past few months.

Published

Sun 15 Sep

Written By

DCA Learning

Children sitting around a table in a garden while a DCA artist demonstrates a technique

The Maxwell Centre

The Maxwell Centre's community garden was a beautiful spot to learn about sun prints and flowers. Our Learning team headed there for two weeks, to teach children from their holiday club all about different printing techniques that involve nature.

Artist Kit Martin and designer Syrah Jay showed the group how to create cyanotype prints using plants from the garden and the lovely Scottish sunlight. The children also tried some flower hammering with artist Sarah Burt, using plants from the garden and metal spoons to imprint the colours and shapes onto paper.

“Sun printing was fun”
“I liked drawing on the Zine”

Photo by DCA

Child showing off his zine featuring flower prints

Photo by DCA

Photo by DCA

Group of children and DCA artist looking at a pond at The Maxwell Centre Community Garden

Photo by DCA

ScrapAntics

Working in collaboration with ScrapAntics, the team held workshops for their Family Club. These sessions started with a visit to DCA Cinema to watch animation Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo. After the film, artist Sarah Burt helped the families to create a screen-printed banner to hang in ScrapAntics's Community Space at The Wellgate Centre.

For the next session it was off to the University of Dundee Botanic Gardens for an introduction from curator Kevin Fedriani, followed by some flower hammering, creating hand drawn bunting full of positive messages and finishing off the printed banner with artists Rio Moore and Syrah Jay.

The final session was spent at ScrapAntics's Community Space at The Wellgate Centre, where families enjoyed making clay impressions and sculptures.

Thank you so much DCA and ScrapAntics. We enjoyed today's activities a lot. You people are very lovely, friendly, supportive. They motivate our kids and us as well.

ScrapAntics Family Club participant

Photo by DCA

Child looking at a sculpture they made from clay, leaves and branches

Photo by DCA

Cilding showing their clay heart creation

Photo by DCA

Photo by DCA

Children standing around a table in a parc doing gelli printing

Family Fun Days

As part of Stobswell and Maryfield's Community Learning and Development team's Family Fun Days, our Learning team visited Malcolm Street Play Park, The Tiny Forest and Glebelands Primary School. At these sessions, artists Sarah Burt and Tom Speedy taught families how to do gelli printing and helped them with banner painting, vinyl mural making and creating clay impressions.

“Without DCA on such events, I don’t see any colourful thing around. DCA staff is so compassionate and helpful when you have got special need ...It also brings out creativity of adult and child and the experience is always wonderful.”
“It was really nice to have this kind of creative activities for kids. My daughter really enjoyed it and these sorts of activities help to enhance their creativity. Thank you very much DCA team!”

DCA bunting and children's prints hanging up in a park

Photo by DCA

Children around a table making clay portraits

Photo by DCA

Photo by DCA

Three children painting on a banner tied to a fence

Photo by DCA

Families in Create Space printing with vegetables

Playday

Along with ScrapAntics and Dundee Science Centre, our Learning team had a great afternoon celebrating Playday 2024 on Wed 7 August.

The plan had been for the event to take place outside but the wind and rain put a stop to that. Luckily, our building was just as good for hosting the different activities. ScrapAntics took over the Meeting Room, filling it with recycled materials for making junk models and loose parts play, and Dundee Science Centre set up on our Ground Floor, welcoming visitors to investigate bugs and make artwork with UV light.

Our Learning team were in Create Space using vegetables to create colourful prints, with lots of colourful results.

Fab experience for all children, with creativity and play at the heart. Great to try printing, learn about insects, other printing, loose parts and junk modeling. Thank you for a lovely couple of hours. More like this please. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Playday visitor

Child sitting n brown paper playing with different objects

Photo by DCA

Vegatables on a table with children in the backgrund using them to print with

Photo by DCA

Families trying activities at Dundee Science Centres table at DCA

Photo by DCA

Prints hanging up to dry in Create Space

Photo by DCA

Head of Learning giving a gallery tour to secondary school pupils

Art & Design Pupil Conference Days

As the summer holidays ended and the schools went back, our Learning team welcomed pupils from Dundee secondary schools for our Art & Design Pupil Conference Days.

This annual event is co-designed by our Learning team and V&A Dundee, alongside local teachers. This year focused on exploring art and design in person and meeting artists and makers to learn about their processes and these two study days provided pupils with an introduction to gallery spaces and made a positive impact on their learning, enthusiasm and confidence.

"Every place we visited was unique and interesting - I really enjoyed getting to explore and analyse all difference forms or art with people who were passionate about their field."
"Thank you! Really made me think more about artworks and ask myself questions I wouldn't have thought of. So helpful for the exam."

secondary school pupils in DCA cinema looking at a portrait on the screen

Photo by DCA

Secondary school pupils sitting on stools in DCA galleries looking at printed artwork on the wall

Photo by DCA

Find out more about our Learning team

Learning

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