Banksy/Blek Le Rat

Banksy was just so popular last week that I had to do another session on him but this time we also looked at Blek Le Rat - the father of stencil art. We began by looking at some more of Banksy's art and talked about what the message was. I had to explain the 'If graffiti could change anything, it would be illegal' quip. It's a good piece to use to illustrate how powerful art can be.

We watched a quick interview with French artist Blek Le Rat, famous for covering Paris with his stencilled rats back in the 80's and has been referred to as 'the rat who gave birth to Banksy'. We drew our own rats and cut them out to make them into stencils. Proved to be quite tricky actually.

But we focussed mostly on tagging and after looking at some examples, the kids designed their own tags using the always wonderful oil pastels. One lad wanted his name to look like it was covered in blood. It's fun to bespoke your name!