To accompany their live stream of What Did I Miss? by Shaun Dunne as part of Brightening Air, The Ark embarked on a nationwide engagement project with 5th and 6th class groups in schools across Ireland.

These online workshops were a collaboration between me and illustrator Duffy Mooney-Sheppard. Through visual art and speechwriting prompts, we encouraged 5th and 6th class children to express, through art and words, their experiences of the pandemic and their feelings about coming to the end of another difficult school year or completing primary school at such a turbulent time.

In the workshop, the children created memory books which looked back at their primary school experiences. Through thinking about the past, present and future, the drawing and writing prompts equipped them to create graduation speeches.