The Peter Clarke Art Centre

On the 22nd of July, the Year 7’s visited the Peter Clarke Art Centre in Claremont. After the short bus trip, we got divided into two groups. Before we went into our class, Mr Buys told us a little bit about the history of the Centre. It was originally called the Frank Joubert Art Centre and was established in 1943. Frank Joubert was a veteran in WW2 and an Administrator of the Cape. He understood the healing of Art and soon invested money into this Art Centre as a place for war veterans and children to be creative.

We went into our classes and met our teachers for the day. We were told we were going to make pink, feathery flamingos made out of newspaper and coloured card. First we learnt how to make roll sticks out of newspaper sheets.

At first it was difficult to get the hang of it but eventually everyone succeeded. We then started building the flamingo frame limb by limb. We had to construct a long neck out of the roll sticks which was quite tricky. Eventually everyone had a stable neck: some bendy, others straight.

We all needed a break by then and had a quick bite to eat. When we returned we got to work on decorating our flamingos in whichever unique way we wanted to. There were pink, yellow and black sheets of paper which we used to decorate it. We made feathers and ruffles; everyone’s feathers were different which looked so beautiful. The flamingos turned out great and they all looked so different.

Cara-Claire