The surprising delights of visiting an outdoor exhibition and creating art from the inspiration back at nursery are explored by Tessa Fenoughty.

Spending the day at an exhibition of contemporary sculptures may not be the obvious choice for an annual summer outing for three-, fourand five-year-olds. But for the past two years we have enjoyed taking the children from our Foundation Stage Unit on a very successful trip to Newby Hall near Ripon, North Yorkshire, to visit the outdoor sculpture exhibition.

LEARNING CONTEXT

Like many stately homes, Newby Hall has had to diversify and offer visitors a range of attractions. So, each year it commissions a number of artists to create and install large-scale and small-scale pieces of contemporary art in its extensive grounds.

The sculptures are created from a range of materials, such as twisted metal, wood, chicken wire, willow withies, glass, ceramics and plastic. They are cleverly positioned along a circular woodland walk, and it is clear that several artists draw their inspiration from the immediate surroundings to create unusual and abstract pieces of art.

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