New Beginnings

Katie Dunne

Exploring life and education beyond the Leaving Cert

After the whole debacle that was the 2020 Leaving Certificate, I was more than happy to leave secondary school behind and move to further education. It had always been my plan to do a PLC before going to university, and with all the uncertainty, I am definitely glad that I made this

decision. In September I began Level 5 Art, Craft, and Design in Abbeyleix. While many colleges have moved their courses 100% online, this wouldn’t work for art due to the highly practical nature of it. That is not to say that there haven’t been any changes because of COVID – far from it! Of course, we all have to wear face masks, as I’m sure we are all used to by now, but there are other measures in place to ensure our safety; we all have allocated seats two metres from other students, with partitions between us. In the case of shared materials or supplies, anti-viral wipes are freely available for use to wipe things down once we’re finished with them.

While this might sound like a lot of change, especially for anyone who has done the same course in previous years, I suppose it hasn’t been too difficult to adjust to the new COVID regulations, because this is my first experience of further education – I’m sure it must be very strange for the Level 6 students! It hasn’t been too difficult to adjust to doing a PLC after finishing secondary school. I was lucky in that I knew a few people in my class before the course started, and it is a fairly small class of very friendly people. One thing that I and a few others in the class found a little strange at first is that we refer to the tutors by their first name, rather than ‘Sir’ or ‘Miss’. The learning in adult education is also far more self-directed than in secondary school, and you have much more freedom; it felt very strange at first to not have to ask permission to use the bathroom! In comparison to a secondary school art class, the art PLC offers much more freedom of expression, as well as the opportunity to work with a wide variety of mediums. I enjoy that we are encouraged to be as wild and creative as possible, and that our work won’t be censored, and that the tutors are open to any off-the-wall ideas we may have. Practical classes in the studio don’t feel so much

like a teacher standing at the top of the room, telling us what to do, but rather a fellow artist sharing their expertise with the class. As well as practical work in the studio, we also have the more theory-based subjects of workexperience, communications, and art appreciation. Compared with art history and appreciation in secondary school, we have more freedom to research artists and art movements we are actually interested in.

We spent our first week in Abbeyleix bog, recording the landscape; we are very lucky to have such a beautiful place to draw so nearby! Then for the next two weeks, we each had to bring in an object, which we used to learn the basics of drawing. After those two weeks, I feel like I’ve drawn more pictures of garlic than any one person would ever need to do in their life! We also had three one-week workshops in painting, ceramics, and textiles / combined materials, where we were taught the basics of each of these disciplines. This is so we have the necessary skills to complete all of the assignments we will be given throughout the year. Although I certainly don’t have a natural talent for most of the techniques I tried out during these three

weeks, I am certainly glad to have had the opportunity to experiment with different ways of making art.

While the situation we are in has certainly made things different, and it may have taken a little while to adjust to the differences of a PLC, I am very excited to have started this course. For me and the people in my class, it is the beginning of our careers as artists, and the start of our journeys through 3rd level education.