Part 1 – Announcing the 2021 Arts in Education Portal Documentation Award Recipients
Image credit: Artist Tunde Toth. Sphagnum moss from a raised bog preservation site – exploring natural environments.
The Portal Team are delighted to announce the first of the two recipients of the 2021 Arts in Education Portal Documentation Award. We are very excited to be working with each recipient in the coming months to document their projects. These projects will be showcased on the portal as the documentation progresses.
About the recipients….
Project Title: ‘Place’ Teacher Artist Partnership Project
This project is a Teacher – Artist Partnership (TAP) residency project between teacher Alyson Hourigan and visual artist Tunde Toth in collaboration with the 3rd class pupils of Scoil Mhichil Naofa, in Athy, Co. Kildare with support from the Kilkenny Education Centre.
The overarching theme for the project is ‘Place’: we will explore natural and built environments, locality, home and belonging through a range of artistic processes both for individual and collective making. The thematic approach to the project will see many curriculum areas feed into the work the children will complete. Some activities the children will be interacting with include: creative ‘deep’ mapping, drawing, walking and collecting, book making, poetry, storytelling and creating materials and fibres. The focus of the project is on participation and enabling the children to actively guide their project and the choices and voices are listened too. The project is a hybrid of face-to-face and online sessions.
This project began in March 2021 when the children completed some online sessions with Artist Tunde Toth from their own homes via Google Classroom. . The Portal Documentation Award will allow the children to create a record of their own efforts and successes within the Arts curriculum and engage in reflective practice. This award will also give the children a voice within the Arts community and allow them to share their creativity with a much wider audience.
Artist: Tunde Toth
Tunde Toth is an artist, educator, arts advisor and researcher. Tunde has been involved with Arts in Education in Ireland since 2006 when she joined the Education Panel at Butler Gallery in Kilkenny City. She is an active member of the Creative Practitioners Panel at Dún Laoighaire Arts Office and Dún Laoighaire Libraries. She devises and delivers the Art Projects in Primary Schools programme in Co. Waterford in partnership with Waterford Arts Office. This year she will be undertaking a Teacher Artist Partnership with Scoil Mhichil Naofa Primary School, Athy.
Teacher: Alyson Hourigan
Alyson Hourigan is a primary school teacher in Scoil Mhichil Naofa, Athy, co. Kildare. She graduated from Mary Immaculate College in 2016 after completing a Bachelor of Education with a specialism in Special Educational Needs. Alyson has always been interested in the Arts, particularly Music, having been a member of Presentation Secondary School choir in Kilkenny and training in classical singing, completing the Royal Irish Academy of Music singing exams. Alyson has always put a huge emphasis on Arts Education in her teaching and completed a TAP summer course in 2020 with Kilkenny Education Centre.