Arts Week 2017 - a summary review

Stratford Arts Week has come and passed, with 5 days of arts-related activities that were pretty exciting for us 1st years in particular, seing as we're the newbies. The objective behind Arts Week is to expand our knowledge of the Arts including literature, dance, illustration and performance. It was also useful to point you towards another past-time or even a future career.

Our first activity saw us dancing thanks to Kyesha, a dance instructor. She taught us four dance moves. She also taught us that hip-hop originates from Brooklyn. I really enjoyed the dancing as it was a fun and active experience.

Our second activity was illustrating nature. Melissa Doran, an illustrator from Co. Leitrim, came in and taught us how to make booklets out of A3 paper. She has many nature books with her illustrations included in them. I would like to do it again because you don’t have to be good at art to make a booklet with nature drawings. It was also a laid-back experience.

Our third activity was slam poetry. The spoken word poet Stephen James Smith came in and recited his brilliant 'I Am Dublin' poem. We also made our own poems with his help. Slam poetry is an interactive and immersive type of poetry. It is like a competition. The audience judge the poetry. If they like a sentence, they simply click their fingers. The poetry also has to have a nice, fluent rhythm to it. I enjoyed slam poetry because it is a more relaxed type of poetry.

The next time I'll be doing Arts Week, I'll be in 3rd year. Exams will be my main focus so I'm happy to have participated in it now without the pressure of exams. Thanks to all the artists that visited our school and inspired us with their creative skills.

Seán Noonan (1st Year)