Our Cygnets Summer Holiday Workshops have been in full swing, for some since the end of August. Take a look at what a typical day looks like for our students over at our Cygnets Edinburgh Southside branch, with Alice, the Headteacher there.
________
The sun has come out for us in Scotland and Summer Workshops have started across the country! My branch – Cygnets Edinburgh Southside, have had a lovely start to our first ever summer workshops. Since opening my school in winter 2025, I’ve been really looking forward to our holiday classes and it’s safe to say they have been amazing already – we’ve met so many new artists and parents and have been so impressed by their talents!
This summer, our theme has been Cities Around the World, which as a keen traveller has been super exciting. Our projects have explored many different mediums and muses, and we thought it would be fun to show you a ‘day in the life at our workshops’ so you can see what we’ve been up to.
Tuesday Morning
10:15am Myself and my lovely assistant teacher, Ally, arrive at our venue to set up our classroom. We have to put all the tables and chairs out, get all our materials ready and prepare for our artists to join us.
10:25am Our doors open for our artists to come in, meet the team and find their seats. We like to hand out ‘doodle paper’ to our students to get their creative juices flowing whilst we wait for everyone to arrive.
10:30am Our first workshop starts! I like to explain the history behind the piece we are creating, and introduce the techniques needed for our medium. This day we were drawing the Colosseum with Dip Pens, so we learnt a brief history of Ancient Rome, and we experimented with the direction and pressure of the dip pen and ink before committing it to our real piece.
11:50am We finish any final details, take photos of our work and wash our hands. Our artists created some incredible work, and we were very proud of how well they adapted to the difficult nature of the dip pens – they are not easy to use!
12:00pm Lunch time! For those students who book on for a full day of art, they bring a packed lunch to have in our break. This is a lovely opportunity for them to relax and make friends with their fellow artists. We saw lots of new friendships blossom during our lunches and it’s one of my favourite parts of our workshop days.
12:30pm We welcome any new students and our second workshop starts. This day we were creating portraits of wolves with soft pastel. We learnt the story of Romulus and Remus and I ran through the best ways to use the pastels to avoid too much smudging before starting our compositions with pencil.
13:45pm The last 15 minutes of a pastel class is spent on finishing touches, spraying fixative over everyone’s work to ensure they don’t smudge too much when taken home and washing hands!
14:00pm We welcome parents in to collect their artists and have a look at their work. It’s such a joy to watch faces light up as they see what their children have made during their time with us. Once everyone has headed home, we pack away the room and head home to prepare for the next day of workshops!
Summer holiday workshops are a great opportunity both for budding artists to give our classes a go, and for our little team to meet new students and parents. We hope that we will see them back again for future workshops, or even in our weekly term time classes which will be starting at the end of August.
