Barry Comprehensive School

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The potters and their teapots

Barry Comprehensive Year 10 pupils have been busy working on a ceramics project as part of their GCSE coursework in Art. During last term each pupil designed a teapot based on Welsh culture and made it from clay. The teapots were fired and glazed in the school kilns and are now awaiting the next stage of the process.

The pupils are exploring the idea of combining ICT with ceramics, which is rarely experimented with in schools due to the very high cost of materials. The process involves scanning the paper based designs and manipulating them using graphics software before printing the finished design onto expensive transfer paper and applying it to the teapots. The pupils and their teacher came up with a novel and appropriate solution to meeting the costs of the materials – a tea party for staff at break-time! By providing and serving tea and cakes at £1 a time, the pupils raised sufficient money to cover the extra costs of the special project themselves.