World Fair Trade Day Art Exhibition

HAPPY WORLD FAIR TRADE DAY

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa   

Last Saturday (11th May) was World Fair Trade Day. People all around the world were taking part in activities and celebrations to help raise awareness about Fair Trade.

For our 4^th year as a Fairtrade School we chose to help Trade Aid with their celebration in their Merivale Shop.

Year 8 art students and the Art extension worked to produce an exhibition of paintings entitled ’Cups of Kindness’.

Amy  year 8

We spent the day talking to many people about Fairtrade and our work. We also handed out Cards we had made and some delicious Fairtrade Food made by Papanui High School students. The Brownies were particularly delicious.

..

Nellie year 8 and ex Heaton Student Gabby …..

We had a huge number of compliments about the art work and many offers to buy our paintings!.....

It was a very special day and we learnt that, however young you are, you can inspire people to make a change and that campaigning can be great fun.

A highlight of the day was our Chorale singing some beautiful African songs.  Many thanks to Mrs Tokona for organizing this.

                                                      

The paintings will be on exhibition in Trade Aid Merivale until Tuesday 21^st May.

We hope that our work will inspire you to make a change too.

Nellie Dodds and Jenny Choi

Kākano Mano Leaders for Mahi Toi/Visual Art

4 years of Fair Trade Art by our students

As we are about to celebrate our 4th Fairtrade Fortnight as a Fairtrade School I have put together some memories of our exhibitions. Special acknowledgement to 
Gareth Davies-Jones music 'Greed for Gain'. I came across this song when I used to volunteer with Traidcraft, the UK Christian Fair Trade Company and Charity. Check out his web site for other music. Gareth was delighted that we were using his music at school.

Fairtrade Inquiry

Visual art – Mahi Toi

‘A cup of kindness’

Exhibition opening on World Fair Trade Day 
Saturday 11th May at Trade Aid , Papanui Road, Merivale, Christchurch
 Join in a day of fun activities and chocolate tasting as we celebrate with Trade Aid.
10am-4pm 

Jenny Choi

The current year 8s have been investigating Fairtrade, the development of paint and Monochromatic painting.

Paint is made from pigment and dyes that are either animal, vegetable or mineral in origin. For example, Tyrian purple used by the Romans came from a small sea snail, the Indigo plant produces a wonderful blue and different earths provide and array of beautiful browns. Depending on the rarity, or difficulty preparing various pigments, some colours are more valuable than others. In older paintings usually it is only the important people who have clothes of purple, red or blue.

To turn pigment into paint there needs to be a binder, a glue, that holds the particles together. In egg tempera the binder is egg, in oil painting it is oil, in water-colour it is Gum Arabic and in acrylic paint it is PVA glue.

All the students first experimented with using instant coffee as paint. The coffee has a natural stickiness and so holds together well anyway. By adding a little PVA glue the coffee paint becomes stronger. However, it also works well just mixed with water but the finished painting does need protecting with a sealer.

We then looked at how oil paint might be made by grinding pigment with oil in a pestle and mortar. Children about the same age as Heaton students would have prepared paints for artists in Leonardo da Vinci’s day. They would usually be boys apprenticed to the artist but occasionally were girls if, for example, their father was an artist.

We made our own Fairtrade oil paint by grinding Trade Aid Cocoa powder with a few drops of Trade Aid Olive Oil. The oil gave the cocoa a much greater depth of colour than just mixing with water.

Because oil paint is quite a flexible paint it allowed artists to paint on a flexible surface such as canvas. Previously artists had painted on heavy panels of wood. Canvas was much lighter and so paintings became more portable.

Students made their own canvases by stretching coffee sacks on a board then priming with household paint. When these were dry they either chose Coffee or Cocoa paint to produce a cup of Fairtrade Coffee or Hot Chocolate. The Ethiopian Coffee sacks have a rougher texture compared to the Brazilian sacks and this effects how the paint may be used.

As students only had one colour of paint, they were only able to vary the colour tonally, making it lighter or darker. This is monochromatic painting.

Mimi

Keeley and Izzy