Due to the size and unique nature of the school it was appropriate to involve all the children at the school in the introductory day of the project. This ensured that all the children and staff knew who the artists were and understood what they were going to be doing in their school over the next few weeks.

The day started with an outline of the project, some warm up games and a handling session for the two Year 6 classes.

The children played some of the musical instruments from the Horniman Museum's handling collection and tried on some of the African garments.

After the morning break boys from Year 4 & 5 were introduced to screen printing and created one half of the Introductory day banner. The selected key object for this project is the Asante stool and therefore the theme of the introductory banner was chairs and seats and they created a variety of shapes including benches, stools and upright chairs. Sola and Viv meanwhile met the younger children at the school, told some stories and showed them the artefacts from the museum.

After lunch the Year 6 boys were introduced to the screen printing process and then they worked on the second half of the 'Chair Banner'. They expanded the theme to include seats from the dentist, the barbers and an impressive looking electric chair.

They also took it in turns to browse the Inspiration Africa! Website off-line looking at the pictures from Kemnal Technology College (Project 1) and Sandhurst Junior School (Project 2). As their visit to the Horniman Museum was coming up soon they had a chance to look at their selected key object (the Asante stool) and the other key objects.

The Year 4 & 5 children were introduced to Viv and Sola and had a look at the handling collection. Viv had brought along one of the headrests and here a pupil tries it out whilst wearing a batik head-tie from the Yoruba people of Nigeria and listening to the sound of African drumming.

At the end of the day the Year 6 children posed for a photo with the completed 'Chair Banner'.

Now read about Thursday's visit to the Horniman Museum