Somewhere over the Rainbow

Somewhere over the Rainbow
Ellie with her rainbow

A first year HND Art and Design student has used a spirit raising activity used by people enduring the current lockdown, to help her progress through her course at home.

Ellie Rodenburg-Abro (18) from Clackmannan, was working on the ‘Community Project’ section of her course, hoping to do some workshops at either her local primary school, high school or Girl Guides, when the current regulations set in.

But she was fascinated by a Facebook community group ‘Believe in Rainbows’ who were helping to inspire some positivity across the UK by encouraging people isolated in the homes to draw, colour, use other art materials and paint rainbows and place them in their windows.

She organised for her family – her mum Marjon, sister Hana (16) and brother Danny (11) – to take part in the workshop in their living room and she took photos of them creating their rainbows on the day. Then they stuck them up in their windows, for passers by taking their one daily exercise walk, to be cheered up

Ellie also placed her project on the Microsoft Sway online platform and sent evidence to her lecturers.

Ellie, said: “I really liked the Believe in Rainbows Facebook page and I thought I could adapt that to link it to my course and also show some positivity and joy throughout this uncertain time.

“I organised for my family to be creative through an hour long workshop and we all definitely enjoyed doing it as it took our minds of work and the situation. My hope would be to encourage people to have some fun like this, especially when times are difficult.”

FVC Creative Industries Curriculum Manager, Linda Paterson, said: “This is a great example of creative problem solving. Instead of dwelling on the fact that she could no longer carry out her planned project, Ellie saw this as an opportunity to give her family something positive to focus on and get her project completed at the same time. Her presentation of the project using Microsoft Sway meant that all she had to do was send the link to her lecturer to allow her work to be assessed. Ellie completed all of this within a week of the college closing!”

 

Ellie 3
Ellie 4