Sgioba Ealain - Gaelic Art Club

When you grow up in GME, it's easy for Gaelic to become this language that you speak in school and nowhere else, especially in a city or a town away from the Gaelic heartlands. It's easy to forget that you belong to a community if there isn't a physical representation of it at your bit.

Sgioba Ealain is hopefully, a bit of an antidote to this. We provide kids with a silly, expressive, engaging space to use their Gaelic, and get stuck in to some arts and crafts activities as they go. Our club is all about trying new things, meeting new pals, and supporting each other to do our best.

This year our programme will run from September-December 2025, and again from January-May 2026, with an exhibition and fundraiser in June 2026.

These workshops are suitable for primary school children, though S1 pupils who have already attended Sgioba Ealain workshops and wish to continue with us are absolutely welcome to return. Children learning Gaelic are also welcome, but please note we do not speak English as a general rule during Sgioba Ealain, so a certain level of conversational Gaelic is necessary. If you are booking for multiple children, use the code SIBLING at checkout for a wee discount.

Ideally, children would be in attendance for the whole programme, as some of our projects overlap (for example, at the start of this year we made our own paper in January, tie dyed shirts in February, and then screenprinted onto both our paper and shirts in March.)

October and November will be really special months, with a full programme of additional workshops and a more indepth creative project for your wee artists, details to follow shortly. There will be a separate booking system in place for this.

Below is a breakdown of our programme, we hope to see you soon!

Mo ghaol, C **

September - Sketchbook making

We'll be using zine-folding and bookbinding techniques to create sketchbooks that the kids will work from in the months to follow.

October and November - details to follow

December - Marbling

Using traditional marbling techniques, we'll create incredible psychedelic backgrounds and works of art in themselves. We'll use some of these pages as backgrounds for our screenprint experiments, as collage materials for our merch creation workshop, and as a bank of inspiration when filling in our sketchbooks.

January - Screenprinting

When we come back in January, we'll be doing the annual Sgioba Ealain group screenprint, pulling all the kids' drawings into one design, and covering everything within a square mile of us with that design. We'll be making prints, patches, and shirts to sell at our fundraiser in the Summer, as well as a personal shirt each for all the kids as a momento. Bring along old clothes to revamp them, scrap fabric, whatever you like!

February - Puppetmaking

Watch out, Jim Henson! The Sgioba Ealain kids will be making their own puppets in February, we can only apologise for how annoying this particular craft is going to be around your houses.

March - Animation Toys

In March we'll be getting technical and creating some intricate animation toys with pegs and wire, as well as making hand-held zoetropes and a group exhibition piece for the Summer show.

April - Pretend Stained Glass Windows

Don't worry! No glass cutting or exposure to led will be happening during this class! We'll be doing a kid-safe version of stained glass creation in April, using acetate and acrylic ledding to make gorgeous light catchers to welcome in the Spring.

May - Merch Creation

In May we'll be getting ready for our exhibition and fundraiser, finishing off our projects, and starting on some wares for selling at our show! The kids will be learning about install and de-install, curating their pieces for exhibiting, and writing artist bios.

June - Sgioba Ealain Exhibition

June's exhibition will be a celebration of all the kids have achieved during this block. We'll be selling merch and artworks by the kids and myself to help fund Sgioba Ealain 2026-27, as well as partying and boogying with our new friends. Tickets for this show will be on sale in the new year.

Sgioba Ealain has a zero-tolerance policy on bullying. Any children (or their grown ups!) exhibiting abusive behaviour will not be welcomed back to our art club. Racism, sectarianism, transphobia, ableism, sexism, homophobia, and any and all other forms of discrimination are not welcome in our space. No refunds will be given in these situations. To date, we haven't had any issues, and we hope to keep it this way!!

-Choirstaidh NicArtair (Kirsty McArthur)

(she/they)

xxx

Host or Publisher Choirstaidh NicArtair