INSPIRE 2020 Entry

Earlier this year, our Morley Makers took part in the INSPIRE 2020 competition run by Access Art and The Fitzwilliam Museum. Based on the National Gallery’s ‘Take One Picture’, the focus painting ‘Cupid and Psyche’ by Jacopo Del Sellaio was chosen to be the centre of the project. The painting depicts the story of Cupid and Psyche’s love and was orginally part of a wedding chest in renaissance Italy.

The project allowed our Brilliant Makers to apply the skills they had learnt in the first round of making. Eva, Lana, Shaam, Jess and Kyla (Year 4 and 5) were introduced to the focus painting, asking to say what they could see and what they noticed. We discussed the character ‘Cupid’, and the effect his bow and arrow traditionally has (shooting the power of love!).

Focusing on the theme of ‘change’ and ‘love’, we discussed inspirational people in the news who were changing the world for the better. Fitting in with our ‘sustainability’ theme for our Community Week and our learning dispositions of ‘resilience’, ‘motivation’, ‘courage’, ‘curiosity’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘reflection’, we spoke about the likes of Greta Thunberg and other activists.

As a result, our makers decided what positive change they would make if they had a ‘magical Cupid’s bow and arrow’ to shoot into the world. Their responses ranged from arrows that stopped deforestation to arrows that helped clean up the ocean.

Using their experience from the first round of model-making, they chose what strong materials to use to make the main shape of the bow (wire or willow withies) and arrow (art straws or withies), what materials to build up a strong shape around the base (newspaper or white stuffing) and what materials to add a final hard layer to strengthen the shape (modroc).

They also used techniques to further strengthen their shapes such as winding, gluing and tying with masking tape, glue guns, and string. In addition to this, they improved the final presentation of their model, thinking about smoothing techniques with the modroc, and choosing specific types of paints based on their thickness and purpose (acrylic for base coats and thicker gouache for bolder details).

The fantastic finished bows and arrows are shown below…