GAF Archives - �鶹��ý��

Melting Time: Year 5’s Showcase for GAF 2025

adminbramford — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 12:28:26 +0000

Our amazing GAF 2025 fortnight is drawing to a close but we wanted to share with you some more amazing, imaginative pieces of arts work our children have created.

Our Year 5 Griffins have delved into the dreamlike world of surrealism, taking inspiration from Salvador Dalí’s iconic painting ‘The Persistence of Memory’. Fascinated by Dalí’s use of melting clocks to represent the fluidity of time, the children have created their own interpretations—kinetic clock models crafted from recycled vinyl records. Each piece is unique, combining elements of art, motion and fantasy.

Pupils explored how form can express feeling and how everyday objects—like a record or a clock—can be transformed into something extraordinary.

As you view these “melting” timepieces, notice how each clock tells more than time—it tells a story of creativity, curiosity, and the power of artistic expression, which aptly sums up what the Griffin Arts Festival is all about!

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GAF 2025 Day 2

adminbramford — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 12:00:45 +0000

Our second day at GAF has been another busy day for our Griffins! After a huge breakfast, we travelled to the Birmingham Royal Ballet for a workshop exploring “Still Life at the Penguin Café.” The children listened to the story of the ballet and then learnt some steps from the ballet, using them to create their own sequence of moves. Our Creative Chameleons danced with confidence and enthusiasm!

This afternoon, we travelled to Birmingham Botanical Gardens and took part in a workshop exploring natural art based on the works of Andy Goldsworthy. As you can see, their pieces of art are amazing!

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GAF 2025 Day 1

adminbramford — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 13:25:56 +0000

Birmingham and Coventry GAF 2025 has begun and our Year 5 Griffins have had a very busy first day. After arriving at Nicholas Chamberlaine School and meeting our fellow Griffins, we travelled to Stratford to take part in a Romeo and Juliet workshop at The Royal Shakespeare Company.

The children discussed the key themes of the story and acted out key parts. Our Griffins acted with enthusiasm and confidence, especially enjoying using clothes and props to bring the story to life.

This evening they have made agamographs, an optical illusion that appears to change as the viewer moves around it. We shall look forward to seeing the results!

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An Energetic GAF 2024!

adminbramford — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 10:38:22 +0000

And so to our final GAF 2024 post of the year!

Griffin Arts Festival is one of our proud traditions and this year again our Griffins were excited, engaged and full of energy for our energy-themed arts activities. The festival was made extra special by the fact we could share our wonderful activities with a very special visitor.

We have already shared arts activities that took place in Year 1, 3 and 6, but we would like to share with you what some of our other Creative Chameleons got up to.

Our Reception children had great fun making and testing kites, using the power of wind to make them fly. ��They also considered how fruit gives us energy, and explored a variety of fruit, first sketching and using pastels to colour and then making healthy smoothies. They were very yummy!

Year 2 were also very busy. Their amazing arts activities included making windmills to explore wind energy and tree houses with solar panels to explore solar energy. Our Slinky-Linky Snakes created their own energetic tunes using Purple Mash and they painted pictures to represent the energy they feel in their bodies when listening to different types of music. This sounds like great fun!

To conclude their GAF activities, Year 1 also had great fun exploring wind as an energy source. After watching a film about windmills in the Netherlands, they investigated stable structures to ensure that their windmills would stand up, then added some sails to catch the wind. At the same time, they used straws to see how wind would move paint to create different patterns. Their pictures look amazing!

It has been a fabulous GAF 2024!

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GAF 2024 Day 3

adminbramford — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 11:57:41 +0000

Our GAF 2024 Griffins have continued to have a packed arts-filled residential. We started at the Botanical Gardens, exploring the amazing flora and fauna. We used our language skills to describe what we saw and our feelings and sketched elements of the plants and buildings.

We then used natural resources found in the environment, to create Andy Goldsworthy-style pieces of art. This afternoon, we walked around Birmingham town centre, discussing the history of the buildings and their importance for the city. Our day has finished with our wonderful GAF Gala evening, the highlight being the Ceilidh barn dance. Our Griffins joined in with enthusiasm and had great fun! They did us proud!

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GAF 2024 Day 2

adminbramford — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 15:51:48 +0000

Birmingham GAF 2024 continues and we have visited three different galleries, all with very different pieces of art work to discuss and question our thoughts about what art is. We started at The Barber Institute of Fine Arts and saw some awe-inspiring paintings. We discussed the theme, the artist and the style used. We then visited the Lapworth Museum of Geology Arts and our Griffins enjoyed finding out facts about the rocks, bones and fossils. We even met Roary the Allosaurus! He was a very tall chap!

After lunch, we travelled to the Icon Gallery and we explored some very unusual art pieces which really broadened our horizons of what art is. We also took part in a really creative workshop, making pictures using mirrors and torches. The final paintings were all very individual and each of our Innovative Iguanas could explain their thoughts and ideas about their art works.

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GAF 2024 Day 1

adminbramford — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 14:01:04 +0000

Our Year 5 Griffins had a super first day at Birmingham and Coventry GAF 2024. We spent the day in Stratford, exploring William Shakespeare’s birthplace, school, houses and the church he was buried in. We then took part in an energetic workshop based on Romeo and Juliet at The Royal Shakespeare Company.

After warming up by using energetic movement to warm up their bodies, they then delved deeper into using Shakespearean insults – which they were very good at!

After a lovely tea, the children either watched the England match or spent time playing with their Griffin family outside.

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Getting Groovy for GAF

adminbramford — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 12:10:25 +0000

Well, GAF 2024 has started at �鶹��ý�� with an “energy”-filled bang! Emma Dugmore, from Inspire2Dance, led dance workshops for our Griffins on the theme of ‘Energy’ on Friday 21st June.

They moved, they grooved and they bopped away to energy themed music and really enjoyed their sessions. And of course the staff enjoyed it too!!

Thank you to Emma and thank you to our Griffins who have welcomed GAF 2024 in such an enthusiastic way!

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Are You Ready for GAF 2024?

adminbramford — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 13:06:49 +0000

Are you ready? Griffin Arts Festival 2024 is coming soon!

One of our GST Proud Traditions is our amazing fortnight of arts activities…and this year will be the best ever! We have dance, drama, art and music activities ready for our young Griffins.

And don’t forget to get your picnic and deck chair ready for our Arts Summer Concert on the field on Wednesday 17th July and our phenomenal “Cat in the Hat” performance by our Musical Theatre group on Tuesday 16th July.

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A Visit to The New Art Gallery

adminbramford — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 07:32:39 +0000

The official GAF 2023 has come to end but at �鶹��ý��, we are still enjoying the arts and Year 6 visited The New Art Gallery in Walsall to explore a variety of traditional and more modern pieces, and works by some famous and some not so famous artists. As they toured the gallery, our Griffins discussed works they liked and those they weren’t so keen on and were quite stunned by the instillations by Karla Black. They even become weather forecasters for the day!

One of the exhibits had special significance as it was a photograph of the cousin of one of our pupils, Billy-Rae, as part of the “Sense of Place” exhibition.

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