Creative Clusters

2024-2026

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In Creative Clusters, between three and five schools collaborate to design, implement, evaluate and share an innovative creative project that supports them to address a common learning vision, issue or challenge. Funding is provided by the Creative Ireland Programme, and in total, St Multose has applied and been successful in receiving €9,000 over our 3 cycles. This has enabled pupils to engage on a huge variety of creative processes. St Multose have taken part in 3 cycles of the Creative Clusters programme; Ukelele le Chéile in cycle 1 and VEX Robotics in cycle 2. In this cycle, we have partnered with Gurraneasig NS, Ballinadee NS, Timoleague NS and Barryroe NS under the project theme ‘Vitamin Sea’. This project aims to research, investigate and learn about the effects of water on our wellbeing and mental health. It has changed and grown over the course of our 2-year cycle, which complements the creative process.  Below is a list of some of the activities we have completed under this theme:

1. Research Baseline: We asked all the children in the school (in groups) to list what water means to them, how it makes them feel, and what the benefits are (in their opinion).

2. We had a Heritage in Schools speaker come in to speak about his exploration of the Arctic. He went through the environment, animals, survival and the supplies needed when taking trips there. 

3. In association with the Kinsale Tidy Towns committee, we prepared a wildflower garden on the ground near the school polytunnel. It is watered regularly by the children in 2nd/3rd.

4. The Síológa (my special class) boys grew a range of flowers and vegetables (lettuce, herbs, etc.) to sell at the Kinsale Market. The boys tended to and looked after the plants as they grew. We made €200.

5. At Christmas, we used clay to make snowflakes. We decorated the snowflakes and placed them on our Christmas tree.

6. We had a 3-day workshop visit from Wise Water. Over the three sessions, they discussed water in our world, its use in everything, the impact of pollution on our waterways, sustainability, and conservation. We also sampled sound baths.

7. We also completed a Creative School art project (displayed on the notice board in the hallway). 

8. Guided by Sonia Caldwell from Heritage in Schools, we designed and produced a short stop-motion video based on the story of the river and sea, highlighting all the plants and animals along the way.

9. Sonia also hosted a seaweed workshop earlier in the cluster. 

 

For our final 2 activities, we will facilitate a visit from ceramist Bernadette Tuite, who will visit for a 3-hour workshop helping the children to design sea-based tiles. She will then take them back to her studio, glaze and fire them and return them to the school to display.

 

We will also be visited by Oceans of Discovery, led by Marine Biologist David Quinlam. He will bring a variety of sea life into our school using a giant tank. Pupils will also get to look at fossils, plants and other marine-related items.

Ukulele le Chéile

In 2020, we secured funding for an initiative called Creative Clusters. We are in a ‘cluster’ with two other schools; Kilgarriffe N.S. in Clonakilty and Ballymoney N.S. near Enniskeane. Our cluster decided to develop a programme around the arts. The teachers identified music as a subject which would potentially benefit from some input. The staff devised a survey on ‘Survey Monkey’ and children from all three schools gave their feedback about their experiences of the arts in school: visual arts, drama and music. This feedback helped to form the vision for our project, which has become known as Ukulele le Chéile. We have bought a set of Ukuleles for each school and the children have decorated them beautifully. Covid-19 had put a stop to our gallop. However, we are now back on track and looking forward to our next step; the beginning of lessons on Thursday 23rd September 2021. These will be facilitated by a very talented singer, song-writer and music teacher from Clonakilty called Christine Deady. This term, the children in Ms Kingston’s room and in Ms Helen’s room will begin to learn the Ukulele and begin to get creative. The children will be encouraged to bring their ukuleles home and to enjoy playing about on them. In the Spring term, we hope that the children will perform over Zoom for the pupils in the other two schools and also become the ‘audience’ for their performances. In the summer term, we are hoping to embody the name ‘Ukulele le Chéile’ and get together in various outdoor locations and jam together, children from all three schools.

We plan to document the different stages of the journey through photographs, audio recordings, written feedback and examples. Watch this space! Towards the end of the process, the children will participate in an evaluation of the programme in the form of a survey. This will help to formulate and update our arts policies in each of the schools. The children will take a central role in the development, implementation and evaluation of this project. Opportunity will be given to the children to learn a new instrument but more importantly to express themselves using it. The children will be encouraged to experiment, be creative, work with their peers, write music, draft and re-draft pieces they compose, sing, accompany with other instruments, perform for classmates, parents, school assemblies and hopefully perform for a wider audience including members from the other schools within the cluster.

 

Ní neart go cur Ukulele le Chéile!

There is no strength without unity!

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Ukulele le Chéile 

A report by Chloë 

Fourth and fifth class are learning ukulele with Christine Deady every Thursday since the beginning of October. Christine is a funky singer- songwriter from Clonakilty and she teaches ukulele in lots of different schools. In the last few weeks, we have been learning the chords A, C, G and F.  We can bring our ukulele home with us to practise and enjoy. We have been learning a lovely song recently called ‘The Fisherman’s Song.’

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Our school is connected with two other schools with ‘Ukulele le chéile.’ The schools are Kilgarriffe N.S. in Clonakilty and Ballymoney N.S. near Enniskeane. After Christmas, we are going on Zoom and showing our songs to each other. Later in the year, we will be meeting up and playing the ukulele together outdoors. I feel really excited about it!