Our Summer of Fun 2026 at The Corn Hall Diss…
Posted on 18th September 2026
Our Summer of Fun 2026 at The Corn Hall Diss began just before the school summer holidays started. James Mayhew’s beautiful exhibition ‘Foxes Firebirds and Fantasies’ hosted a visit from Diss Junior School where we searched the paintings for references to the work of Van Gogh, talked about how collage is created, found all the firebirds on display and decided which paintings we enjoyed the most.
Start with Art! inspired by ‘Foxes Firebirds and Fantasies’ saw James back with us for a third visit. This time, with the help of our young SWA! artists, James created a collage firebird which then took its place in the gallery as part of the exhibition. It was such
good fun. The children appreciate the opportunity to work with a ‘real artist’. We also made masks, looked at Creature Features, made moveable chimera, tried our hand and book binding and creating our own stories and montage and collage work as well as water play and creating fairy gardens and dinosaur parks.
Thank you to everyone who came along to these sessions, it was great to see your creativity in action; and that of the grown ups who came with you. We hope to see you again very soon.
Our next SWA! is on Tuesday 27th October inspired by the exhibition ‘Last Autumn Light’, the work of Nessa Dalglish, our very own Anya Temple, Lou Thompson and Catherine Ward. It would be great to see you there.
James Mayhew returned to the gallery on Sunday 19 July with a performance of Painting and Story telling to Music. In the magical setting in the galley surrounded by James’ work we were treated to musical extracts from The Carnival of the Animals, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Sin bad the Sailor from the Stories of Sheherazade, and an extract from
Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Four lucky members of the audience each went home with an original paintings by James . A very BIG thank you to James for making our summer so special.
On 20th August we were joined by 80 avid brickologists who spent a busy morning working on their creations and as the holidays drew to a close we finished with 40 young cardboard creatives joining us on planet Corn Hall to give life to cardboard as they designed their space craft, aliens and planets for our very own galaxy.
Please click here to download this report as a pdf