Creative Schools Week is a celebration of creativity in schools which includes both In-School Celebrations and Online Celebrations. The week is an opportunity to share, showcase, and connect all the exciting creative work that is being undertaken in participating schools around the country.

Gortskehy NS was selected to participate in the pilot phase of Creative Schools in 2018 and since then, we have have enjoyed many opportunities for our pupils to build their artistic and creative skills; to communicate, collaborate, stimulate their imaginations, be inventive, and to harness their curiosity.

This year, our school submission, featuring the 3rd and 4th class radio show was selected by the Arts Council to feature in the 2021 Creative Schools Online Celebrations.

The Online Celebrations will feature on the Art’s Council website here, from  Wednesday May 12th to Friday, May 14th.   Gortskehy NS and the Radio Show  will feature in Episode 1, which will launch on Wednesday, May 12th.  We are inviting parents and families to tune in to view the celebration on May 12th. Congratulations to Ms. Thomas and the talented pupils of 3rd and 4th class on this fantastic feature –  a wonderful achievement. 

@Claremorris946 @jojo_hynes @creativeirl @artscouncil_ie

“For the next hour, we advise the whole country move to level Gortskehy”

As part of our Creative Schools initiative 3rd and 4th class were presented with the opportunity of creating a radio show. We worked very hard with Jojo Hynes, our creative associate and Claremorris Community Radio. We started by brainstorming ideas and began the creative process of putting radio pieces together. We learned how to make radio reports, how to present items for radio and how to structure an hour of radio. We covered everything from the news and weather to farming to the sports desk and everything else in between. We also included some seasonal pieces as it was being aired on Christmas Day 2020.

We would like to thank Jojo Hynes and Claremorris Community Radio for giving us the opportunity of a lifetime. We had great fun putting this together and we hope you enjoy ‘Gortskehy Radio’ as created by 3rd and 4th Class. We definitely have a few budding radio stars in our midst here in Gortskehy National School.

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Gortskehy on Claremorris Community Radio 94.6 FM.

This is the story of Noel Joyce an unfortunate hurler who, following a bang to the head, managed to score an own goal and lose the county final for his team. We planned it as part of our weekly Zoom lessons. The pupils recorded their allocated lines at home and we stitched the clips together to create this final video.

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The 13th of June is a national day of FREE creativity for children and young people under 18.

Visit Creative Ireland where you can select your county to see all the free creative activities available on the days leading up to the 13th and on the day itself.

There are many county and national online events that children and young people can participate in.

You may recognise some of the artists from our participation in the Creative Schools programme.

Why not learn how to juggle? 🙂

Last week, we celebrate Creative Schools Week (4th – 8th November).  This was an opportunity to showcase, celebrate and share our creative work that is being undertaken in the school this year to date.  Our key focus within Creative Schools is Music.

This year, our 4th, 5th and 6th classes are taking part in the “Ceilí Ukulele” programme which is run by Music Generation Mayo.

Céilí Ukulele is designed as a 28-week programme over the academic year, with weekly lessons of 60 minutes’ duration.  Over the course of a full academic year, students will aim to learn 15+ songs &  20+ melodies on the ukulele, as well as honing their performance skills through regular group practice and performance.  Each week, our specialist Music Generation Mayo musician-tutor, Keif, visits the school to provide whole-class tuition designed to engage and excite students about playing the ukulele and singing accompanying songs.

We have completed 8 weeks and have learnt so much already.

Here is a video of our talented pupils performing a song accompanied by the ukulele:

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