To make our school campus a no-plastic zone, as part of our
CAS activities, we decided to make recyclable paper bags that we could
distribute to the students of our school and help them to stop using plastic
bags. When we first started with our project, we never anticipated that we
would end up making as many bags as we ended up making. The paper bags were to
be inaugurated during the school book fair, to replace the plastic ones that
are usually handed out. Using newspapers to make the bags and with the help of
the art department, we headed down to the AV room with a couple of bottles of
glue and a lot of optimism.
I had
never been greatly involved in art before joining the IB diploma programme
(except for a small stint in second grade but I don’t count that). What I found
out was that I should have spent more time colouring, and less time watching
TV. A refreshing eighty minutes later, we walked out much more active than we
went in (our CAS hours are on Friday afternoons, so you can’t really blame us
for our lethargy). The process of creation always lifts up anyone’s mood, and
it was no different that day. It was a good team-building activity because we
found ourselves co-ordinating with each other to get that piece of newspaper,
or that glue bottle, or to put that bag here or there and with help from our
CAS co-ordinator to keep us on track, we actually didn’t get out of topic for
once.
In all
the experience was a great example of a creative session. I hope we get to do
more activities like that in the future. There is really a lot to explore in
the creativity component of our CAS activities, and I think in the future I would
be very interested in doing more such activities.
