Art inspires fiction in pupils' visit to gallery

Reporter: Karen Doherty
Date published: 19 June 2017


ART inspired fiction when Hathershaw College pupils visited Gallery Oldham.

The Year 7 group studied the paintings Fire on Union Street by Oldham artist Helen Bradley and Yorkshire Street by Harry Rutherford from Denton when they took part in the gallery's Once Upon Oldham literacy workshop.

They used the people in the paintings as the inspiration for a character for a story, creating a name, age and occupation - and giving them a secret.

They also described what was happening in the paintings, concentrating on describing the different senses. Back at school, they wrote their stories and created book covers for them.

The pupils do English, maths and history lessons with Karen Smedley, the school's closing the gap teacher who works with Year 7 children who need extra support to catch up with their peers.

"The pupils who attended the gallery came to secondary with some gaps in their learning and with limited descriptive vocabulary so activities such as this are ideal," said Karen.

"You can write from a picture stimulus in school, but to stand in front of a large painting and look at it in detail really fired their imaginations and allowed us, as a class, to gather the vocabulary they would need to write.

"It also allowed pupils to use and understand the purpose of a flashback in their narrative."