By Carmel T. Madigan
In the past few weeks I have worked with approximately 75 fifth class children on an ocean engagement and art project. The children are based at the Holy Family School, Ennis, so well away from the ocean front. As part of the Explorers Education Programme, the children are firstly introduced to the seven principles of ocean literacy, and get to think more about how the ocean and humans are interconnected, in terms of food, oxygen, transporation, minerals, medicines and our day to day interactions. To consolidate this discussion with the children, they get to create ocean-inspired artworks.
I source my raw materials from the vast selection of marine trash (plastics and other materials) washed up on our shorelines. Having studied it for years, it arrives to our shores from all over the world (but probably mostly, dumped at sea). This ugly looking stuff is then taken home where I pour alot of time over it getting it cleaned, sterlized and sprayed ready for new interpretations. Much of this broken plastic lends itself for imagination as shipwrecks on the sea bed, as a base for sea gardens, to create arty sea creatures and so forth. Indeed the children had a whale of a time with their marine
themed immaginations! The results are great. Providing a wide range of materials for the children allowed them to express their imaginations vis a vis the imagery of sea life they had viewed. Fibres make for great 'seaweeds', nets are prevalent on the shore both washed up and in fishing boats, so netting was of great interest to the children.
The above images show that marine plastic found and collected from the shoreline, can provide a fantastic base material for developing children's creative imagination. For one thing, no two pupils will create the same artwork, since that the starting point is an 'original' piece of marine plastic drift. For another thing, children get to work with 3d creativity, where aesthetics, physics, combinations, critical thinking and imagination are each challenged. My question is, why oh why haven't more people, entrepreneurs, beachcombers seen the value of marine plastic as a commodity in it's own right??? There are some world class artist all around the world now using marine plastic as their base material, but they are having to collect it all on the shoreline themselves. This is a slow and time consuming process. There appears not to be a second hand market created for selling marine plastic as a commodity anywhere in the world?? Yet many will go to the shore and engage in other back-breaking activities like seaweed picking, periwinkle picking and so forth. There is normally a market for practically everything on earth, and plastic is a valuable commodity, because it can be re-used again and again and again, if not used in art. There rests my case.
