Ysgolion Utopias Bach Schools
Lesson plans and resources
“Working with Utopias Bach provides us with a creative way to involve whole communities in an engaging, imaginative and accessible way. Art has an important function in providing a way to form a nucleus of people to work together on solutions.
Utopias Bach in particular supports people to identify what they can do to make a difference to the big challenges; no small feat. Artistic interventions like this are the salve needed to overcome the seemingly insurmountable barriers to creating cohesive and prosperous Welsh communities”
- Mark Gahan, Rural Futures
We have been working with Rural Futures in two schools, to map their community and imagine a magical future. This will be the starting point for creating a ‘Story Studio’, engaging the whole community in imagining their future.
We’ve been developing some guided visualisations and lesson plans - for Ysgol Sion Cwilt over zoom, and for Ysgol y Ffridd in the classroom - and an exchange with Malawi.
This page [under construction] will contain resources, some yn y Gymraeg, some in English in case you’d like to use them, in a school or out of school context.
Mapping
The first session in both schools was focused on mapping how you feel about where you live/the area around the school now. We used a guided visualisation of flying over the area first, and then individually working on a treasure map to show what they’d seen and how they feel about it. In Ysgol y Ffridd, we went on to create a ‘whole class map’ of Gwalchmai.
Guided visualisation
Ysgol Sion Cwilt
Bl 3&4
Ysgol y Ffridd, Gwalchmai, Blwyddyn 5&6
Bl 3&4
Imagining the future
Ysgol y Ffridd, Blwyddyn 3&4
Ysgol y Ffridd, Gwalchmai, Blwyddyn 5&6
The second session in both schools went to the future, with a time machine. After designing their very own personal time machines, we ran a guided visualisation of a day in your life in 2050, in your ideal, imaginary future, where everything is just as you want it to be.
After the visualisation, there was an opportunity to chat to another person about what they saw, and then create little zig zag books of their time travel experience.
Recordings from Ysgol Sion Cwilt
Zig Zag books from Ysgol y Ffridd, Gwalchmai
Creating Utopias Bach
Ysgol Sion Cwilt facebook post with lots of pictures!
Bl. 4, 5 a 6 yn mwynhau gweithdy 'Utopias Bach' yn edrych ar eu hardal leol ac yn creu arddangosfa mewn bocs er mwyn dangos pa fath o ddyfodol hoffent ei weld.
Yrs. 4, 5 and 6 enjoying the 'Utopias Bach' workshop looking at their local area and creating a scene in a box to show what type of future they'd like to see.
Ysgol y Ffridd, Gwalchmai Bl 3-6
See full results here, together with how the work was made into an exhibition and ‘story studio’ for the whole village
