New primary gets a fresh school - of fish!

Sunday 28 February 2016

The second half of term has been going swimmingly at one of the Island’s primary schools – thanks to a new art installation.

Jane James has spent the last three years on her ‘schooling’ work of art and created shoals of fish that are now swimming through each of the classrooms at the new St Martin’s School.

She has created 494 brightly coloured fish, each one hand cut from clay and sculpted and glazed by Jane and her team who spent three days during half-term positioning them all around the school.

Each classroom now has a shoal with exactly the same amount of children and teachers in the class, sized according to their year group and coloured by the Rainbow Song 'Red and Yellow and Pink and Green, Purple and Orange and Blue' and there's a really big shoal of them now swimming together in the school's Atrium.

Jane said:  "We wanted to go with something sea themed, I wanted some interactivity and I wanted it to be fun and to work in a school. I looked at the space and designated the atrium area and I wanted the interactiveness in their classroom, where the children could go and see themselves represented in the fish. 

"I made two fish for every child, one in the main classroom and one in the main central piece. Every single fish I individually cut out – none of them are the same just like all the children are all different. 

"The little tiddly ones are nursery, reception and then they go up and there is a slightly bigger fish for the teacher and there’s a TA at the back. They start small and get bigger and are all swimming in the same direction, all swimming together in the same way as a school of fish swim together, the children all school together, protecting each other."

It's the biggest project Jane has worked on to date and she's delighted with the end result.

She said: “I love it, I’m really pleased, It went up really well, it’s done exactly what I wanted. It brightens up the place and the headmistress says it’s the icing on the cake. They’ve made an amazing school.”

The project was part of the Percentage for Art scheme but Jane will continue working as the school's artist in residence over the next year and says she'll be helping the children create their own little fish to take home.