Redlands School, Tower Hamlets

Together, over a 3 day period (24th, 25th & 26th), the artists involved in the project and Teresa Hare Duke from the V&A Museum of Childhood delivered a series of workshops at Redlands School in Tower Hamlets. These were part of a much wider community programme organised by Teresa which included work with The Central Foundation School in Mile End.

Redlands school has an amazing, large and well resourced art room, thanks to the teacher Helen Kelly.

Tarun, Tapan and Lokesh had been busy with workshops both whilst at the Harley Gallery and during their stay in London.

The workshops with the school explored rickshaw art and block printing. The children saw images of the rickshaws we had seen in Bangladesh as inspiration

samples of Tapans painting

and examples of rickshaw components.

Simple shapes like those seen on the back of rickshaws had been cut from metal foil and primed.

The children drew out their designs on paper, then transfered them to the metal foil using acrylics.

With Lokesh the children used traditional wood blocks from India to print designs onto paper (cards and wrapping paper)

and fabric (Muslin).

We showed the children images of the Block printers at New Market in Dhaka. To my amazement a large number of the 9-11 yr olds in the workshops had been to Bangladesh and recognised where it was.