The Art That Binds

Where else…?

t was back in 2022 that the Greystones Community National School signed up with the Erasmus project I Exist With Art.

The partner countries are Sweden, Italy, Romania, Turkey and Belgium, and a delegation hit Greystones this week.

Co-funded by Erasmus+ programme of the EU, the group are currently working on an Art Assessment Chart that will explore using art as a therapeutic tool.

In the meantime, Greystones CNS SNAs Widaad O’Sullivan and Lucy Pappas were the tour guides for the lucky visitors…

We had a wonderful week in GCNS with our Erasmus partners. They visited all the classrooms to see a variety of lessons including aistear, art, Gaeilge and music, to name a few.

Mr Hughes even got some involved in the hurling that was going on in the hall.

On Friday, we had them attend a whole school assembly, where we sang some songs as Gaeilge, listened to Adela on the keyboard, and Billy played the fiddle. We had some fantastic Irish dancing from Alex, Kai, Kamile and Madison.

To finish the assembly, each country was presented with a bag of gifts from Ireland. And, yes, the Taytos were in there!

They were blown away with everything that they saw in our school and how wonderful all the children were. We were very proud of all the children.

It’s been a wonderful experience being part of I Exist with Art. We’ve explored music, visual art, drama, digital art and art therapy in this programme and have seen how other countries explore the arts through different mediums.

We’ve had many Greystones Community National School staff travel to Romania, Sweden, Belgium, Turkey and Italy over the last two years. It was amazing to have over 20 people from those countries visit us in Ireland and see how school life works here. They also enjoyed visits around Greystones and Wicklow, and loved the gorgeous food in our town…

The last word goes to school’s acting principal, Tara D’Arcy.

“A huge thank you to Widaad O’Sullivan and Lucy Pappas for taking charge of the project and putting in hours of work into managing the week and showing our guests an amazing time in Greystones CNS and Ireland.”