STUDENTS CREATE ART FOR ‘MONTH OF THE MILITARY CHILD’ COMPETITION
22 April 2024 | Sven Wardle | Posted in: Community, News, Service Children
April is the ‘Month of the Military Child’, an opportunity to recognise the important role that service children play in the Armed Forces family.
Richmond School works closely with Never Such Innocence, a charity that provides opportunities for service children to have their voices heard. We always look forward to the opportunities Never Such Innocence provides for our service students in school.
Recently, a group of 44 service students and their peers took part in an art workshop led by Mr Birdsall, Service Children’s Advocate for Richmond School and Sixth Form College. The workshop started with Mr. Birdsall leading a discussion about the effects of war. In groups, students worked hard on thinking of ideas based around the question: ‘How does war affect people’s lives?’ This enabled students to then independently create detailed and thought-provoking work, some of which has now been submitted to the Month of the Military Child competition run by Never Such Innocence.
Mr Birdsall, Service Children’s Advocate said: “I was very impressed by the students’ engagement and creativity in the workshop. It was lovely to see the students talking about their family lives and the involvement their parents have or recently had within our armed forces. I never cease to be deeply moved by the upheaval and challenges that these students face. The collaborative teamwork shown within the session was brilliant to see with service students from different year groups coming together and making friends.”
During the session students also finished a beautiful piece of artwork which had been sent to Richmond School by Never Such Innocence for our students to collaborate on. The artwork was an unfinished piece from Princess Anne High School, Virginia Beach, USA. The work was started by a group of service students from their school. The thrill and buzz around collaborating with students from across the world is something our service children really appreciate. In fact the students enjoyed this so much they intend to return the favour and send a piece across to have Princess Anne’s service children complete.
In addition, students created some artwork alongside the Never Such Innocence competition with the Ukraine in mind. Some of this artwork will be sent to a school in Ukraine as a gift of thought through the help of Never Such Innocence.
The winners of the competition will be announced later on in the summer – watch this space for updates!
A link to the brief for the workshop can be found here:
https://tinyurl.com/ServiceStudentsArtWorkshop
A selection of the artwork produced at the workshop can be seen at this link: