From The Ground Up

A guide to creating and running gardens for nature based art with children in a school or community setting - With David Begley

Three two hour live class recordings, PDF, and short video resources.

In this series of talks, artist, writer, and filmmaker David Begley will share his experiences growing and nurturing gardens with children in schools, on a home school project, and in a community allotment. The talks will include a screening of David’s film The Keepers, created to highlight the importance of art and gardening for children and using the garden as a source for art workshops.

David will demonstrate art activities for children and share his lesson plans. This series will be of interest to artists, parents, facilitators, teachers, and community groups. David will discuss practical aspects such as working with schools, equipment and material lists, child appraisal, risk assessments and safety, insurance, working with weather, and how challenges create opportunities to learn.

Most of this series is aimed at children from 5-6 years up as David teaches mostly in school gardens with children from 5 years up. On the allotment David works with 3 year olds upwards and they love the workshops and are great fun to work with.

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FAQs

  • The live sessions will go from 4-6pm with a 15 minute tea break at 5pm.

  • Written lesson plans will be provided.

  • Live session recordings will be available to watch for three months.

  • If you cannot attend live, you can send in your questions beforehand for David to answer during the sessions.

About David

David Begley is an award winning Irish artist, film maker, writer, and arts educator. He has exhibited his animations, drawings, paintings, monotype prints and films, nationally and internationally since 1996. 

In 2020 David was commissioned by Wexford County Council to create The Monk’s Garden, a visual art, heritage, and gardening project with St Edan’s National school, Ferns. This project gave the children the opportunity to  grow and harvest food, dig an archaeological excavation, explore medieval ink making, and by using the garden as a source for visual art workshops, create an exhibition of paintings and drawings. Inspired by this work, David made his short documentary The Keepers highlighting the importance of art and gardening for children. The film has been screened at film festivals in Czech Republic, Greece, Ireland, UK, and US.

Immersed in ink making, David created a short film and series of paintings titled Small finds exhibited at St David’s Cathedral Refectory, Wales, and Wexford County Council in 2023. He continues to create school gardens, working through art, animation, heritage, and gardening at a home school project and a community allotment.
David facilitates regular workshops for adults at Chester Beatty, Dublin, Irish National Heritage Park, Wexford, mentors professional visual artists, and he was invited to contribute to Making Charcoal for artists by Kate Boucher, published by The Crowood Press (July 2024).