About this Event
Sgioba Ealain is a Gaelic-language art club established in 2024 by artist Choirstaidh NicArtair (choirstaidhiona.jpeg). It is an inclusive space for Gaelic-speaking kids to learn about the world of art, historical and contemporary, through play, crafting, and the Gaelic language.
This Autumn, Sgioba Ealain will be welcoming some of our favourite gaelic creatives to help us explore our past, present, and future as gaels in Glasgow, as part of a collaboration with the Gaelic Futurisms group exhibition coming in November.
This exhibition will feature many Gaelic-speaking artists from all over Alba, who investigate many of the themes our Sgioba Ealain classes are looking at. This is especially true of Choirstaidh's own work, which will sit beside the Sgioba Ealain cohort on the walls of the gallery, and use many of the same techniques we'll learn over the next few weeks.
We’ll create new folklore, write poems, and sing with the voices of birds. we’ll make prints with the sun. we’ll paint with the dirt. we’ll turn our stories into art, and we’ll share that art with our city.
The Programme -
27th September - 10am-12pm @ Glasgow Green - Wild Art Materials with Choirstaidh NicArtair, and Nature Sounds Recording with Cashlin MacKenzie.
Join us at Glasgow green to gather natural art materials from our environment, make dirt paint, make sun prints (weather allowing!!) and record the sounds around us, with the help of our first guest creative, artist Cashlin MacKenzie. We'll use our wild materials throughout the programme, as well as the noises we gather too. Please note that the grown ups of participants MUST be in attendance at this workshop, as we are outside in an open space. We want everyone to be able to roam freely, but to do so safely! Please wear cosy and waterproof clothes and footwear!
4th October - 10am-12pm @ An Lòchran - Lore Creation with Choirstaidh NicArtair + Rachel Kate Macleod, and Gaelic Poetry with Cameron Wilson.
Our second workshop will be held at An Lòchran in Partick, where we'll be investigating the idea of lore with the help of our friend Rachel Kate Macleod, a Gaelic artist, actor, comedian, and designer. We'll be telling eachother the stories of our lives, our friends and family, and considering the question "Whose stories get to become legends?" We'll start to come up with the personal lore that will form our final art pieces for exhibition at the Gaelic Futurisms exhibition launching in November, exhibited alongside Choirstaidh NicArtair's artworks of the same theme. We'll also be joined by Cameron Wilson, a Gaelic poet based in Glasgow, to explore how we can express ourselves in Gaelic through Poetry, traditional and new.
18th October - 10am-12pm @ An Lòchran - Storyboarding with Choirstaidh NicArtair + Rachel Kate Macleod, and Cainnt nan Eun with Josie Duncan.
Following on from our lore creation and poetry workshop, Choirstaidh and Rachel Kate will be leading a workshop in storyboarding, or how to visually tell our stories. We'll be joined by singer-songwriter Josie Duncan from the Isle of Lewis to learn about Cainnt nan Eun, a tradition in Gaelic music where we mimick the sounds of birds with Gaelic vocables and words. We'll record our experiments and songs, ready for the next session...
25th October - 10am-12pm @ An Lòchran - Mask Making with Choirstaidh NicArtair + Rachel Kate Macleod, and Soundpieces with Cashlin MacKenzie.
In the last of our guest workshops, Cashlin Mackenzie will join us again to pull together all of our audio experiments into a piece of sound art that we'll show at the group exhibition alongside our other work. While we explore who we, and the people we come from are through our visual art, we'll be exploring our environment, where we come from, through our sound piece. We'll also be making masks using a lot of our gathered materials from way back in session 1, to represent the "us" we've created in our lore, and to help us understand the stories we're about to tell in our two final workshops.
1st November - 10am-12pm @ An Lòchran - Tableau Drawing with Choirstaidh NicArtair + Rachel Kate Macleod.
In our second last session together, we'll be drawing our final pieces out, taking our time, and pulling together everything we've learned. Participants will have time for 1-1 drawing help from Choirstaidh and Rachel Kate to help them realise their ideas, which will then be digitised and turned into screens for our final session...
15th November -10am-12pm @ An Lòchran - Screenprinting with Choirstaidh NicArtair.
In our last workshop, Choirstaidh will help the participants screenprint their final artworks for exhibition. We'll make several prints, most of which can come home with you after this session, but the best will be kept to show off to the whole city in November! We'll play around with collage elements, pulling in our past experiments from our first session of mud painting, our sun prints, our masks, everything!
The Details -
Workshops are open to primary aged children with, or learning gaelic. These classes are free, and booking is essential. Please note that children must be accompanied by a responsible adult during our outdoor workshop on the 27th of September.
Work will be carried over from workshop to workshop, culminating in final pieces that will be exhibited during the Gaelic Futurisms group exhibition coming November 2025. Participants and their families will be invited to join our opening nights and social events throught the exhibition's run, details to follow.
Children must be able to attend the 4th October, 1st November, and 15th November workshops, as well as at least one other workshop in the programme, as these are vital to our final outcomes.
This is a Creative Scotland funded project, and all workshops are free to attend. Booking is absolutely essential, and we ask that you give us as much notice as possible if your child is no longer able to attend any or all of our workshops.
If you have any other questions, please contact Choirstaidh NicArtair by email at [email protected].
We can't wait to see you!
Tugainn, Sgioba Ealain!
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
An Lòchran, 22 Mansfield Street, Glasgow, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
