Sara Cooper - Artist in Residence, Green TV

Working as artist in residence with Tees Valley Arts on year two of the Green TV natural heritage project with Golden Flatts Primary School, Seaton Carew

Site visit  - July 2011

Pupils and teachers make a second visit to Tees-mouth Field Centre and Nature Reserve. We’re planning to draw our journey around “the Snook” so we fold simple paper maps for later, and pupils take their field notebooks to finish work on their A-Z drawings.

Before we head out to explore the site I show the children how to make wax resist drawings, using candles and chunky graphite sticks to make rubbings of objects and surfaces. Lynne gives the class a quick tutorial on using digital cameras to record what we see - we’re going to look for evidence of ship-wrecks!

Visit to the Snook - an island opposite South Gare, only accessible at low tide.

We walk across from North Gare, the wet sand shining in bright sunlight - it’s a hot day but far less windy than our first visit. We can see the Little Terns feeding and hear them calling - Lynne describes it as the sound of summer.

Up and across the sand dunes and through the marram grass, spiking our ankles and calves. Some of the children have never walked this far before and would prefer to catch the bus!

Driftwood trees, silver grey, bleached by the sun, scoured smooth and clean by the windblown sand. We’re looking at surface texture, shape and form; the children make rubbings of found objects - natural and man-made. We find discarded fishing nets, timber and huge chunks of slag. The shells seem bigger on the Snook - cockle shells and mussels, fishing line and crab claws amongst the bits of coloured plastic.

Rangers Lynne and Claire guide us around the Snook and help us to orientate ourselves so that we can draw maps when we get back. We’re at sea level and much closer to the gigantic cargo ships that appear to glide past us like so many giant toys. The power station, a monumental backdrop to our survey of the island and another giant, an oil rig, waits to be repaired.

Back at the Field Centre we have lunch then the children work in three groups. One group makes drawings and surface rubbings of found objects - bits of driftwood, timber from wrecks, pulleys, nets and ropes. Other children use brushes with ink to reveal their collections of surface textures, flotsam and jetsam. Group three work with Lynne to identify birds, animals, minerals and plants for their A-Z field-books. The groups circulate and everyone has a go at each activity.

We use the whiteboard to draw a group map of the Snook and pupils recall where we walked and what we saw. Everyone in the class draws their own journey map and records where the birds and wrecks could be found.