Last term, students from the University of Cambridge Primary School, with the support of Cambridge Zero, took part in a climate-themed art project.
“The idea of 'Agents for Change' was to create an interactive and positive art project, highlighting the importance of addressing climate change,” said Dr James Biddulph, Head Teacher of the University of Cambridge Primary School.
The children first identified four themes, namely, poles and oceans, endangered animals, trees and plants, and people. Then, each class of 30 children were given nine cardboard boxes, and their individual artwork was fixed to one side of a box — producing 54 individual pieces of work per class, which in turn represented the particular theme the class was working on.
The cubes could be moved around, rotated, and placed in different groupings, which meant that when the boxes were arranged in a three-by-three formation, the nine pictures on the pile of boxes would create a thematically-related face. “For example, one side might be nine pictures of penguins and the opposite side nine pictures of polar bears — species which are, literally, poles apart!” Dr Biddulph added.
The children working on the theme of ‘people’ drew self-portraits in oil pastels. Their 30 faces were supplemented with six mirrors. The observer could then see their own face together with those of the children, making the observer part of the installation and of the group of children working on the project.
Dr Biddulph further explained, “The idea of placing the mirrors was to highlight the fact that we are all agents of change, the children and those enjoying their work. Given that there were a total of 54 faces, of the remaining 18 faces, nine were words and phrases to do with climate change and the other nine were monochrome, from light to dark, symbolising the range of possible outcomes depending on our ability to change.”
The children from the four classes taking part in the projects had a fantastic time, as did the Cambridge Zero team.
