"We are pushing the boundaries of what art is," said Joanne Ball-Burgess, Education and Community Outreach Officer at the Bermuda National Gallery. In this bold statement, she referred to her groundbreaking collaboration between her own organisation, the Department of Parks, Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art, and the Kaleidoscope Arts Foundation.

The new art programme, 'Art & Me', intends to enhance the school art curriculum through providing a group of 15 students from Paget Primary and Gilbert Institute with elaborate art lessons that allow them to participate in various public exhibitions and contribute to the facility itself.

For the latest activity, on October 29, the Primary five students of Gilbert Institute used every day objects, such as plastic cups and combs, to paint large plant pots which will be displayed at the L.F. Wade International Airport.

The students themselves devised the patterns to transfer onto the pots, creating a more personal, intricate display of their individual talents and creativity.

This activity is only one of many exciting endeavours for the students of the nine-week programme. The 90-minute art sessions are designed not only to enrich society's perception of art's importance, but also to encourage the students as individuals to value their talents and think of art in a more cultural and academic context.

Ms Ball-Burgess reiterated this sentiment in order to inspire schools across the Island to include art as a vital part of the curriculum, and not just a relaxing outlet.

She acknowledged that the art programme "enhances the children's vocabulary and goes right into their writing".

Art's value in terms of academics is undoubtedly influential, but she also insisted that the programme serves a higher purpose for the students: "This is not just art for art's sake, but it's also to build self-esteem. Every week I have them say, 'I am an artist'."

The effort and commitment put into this programme have evidently had an impact on the students' creative prosperity.

"Teachers from Gilbert and Paget Primary say the creativity levels are higher in these kids now than when they did art only once a week," marvelled Ms Ball-Burgess.

As a result of this encouragement, the students have become increasingly inspired in relation to their artistic talents and aspirations.

When asked about why her interest in art has grown, nine-year-old Mya Alexis Santucci replied: "Because I like to see all the arts I can do."

The cultural variety of arts that the programme provides for these students is clearly an aspect they are most excited about: eight-year-old Bradley Adams expressed how he "wants to see all the different lifestyles", and that what he has learned from this experience is "that it doesn't matter if you make a mistake, you can always make it into a better thing".

An increasing taste for individuality has also become a significant lesson for these eager students.

Nine-year-old K'ari Bean proudly announced, "It doesn't matter what other people think, it only matters what we think."

Not only have these lessons in artistic expression encouraged increasingly bold and imaginative thinking amongst the students, but they have also clearly demonstrated that the most important aspect of creativity is to have fun.

Student Candace Martins said that the experience is most important to her "because you get to paint and it's fun", which prompted her fellow Gilbert students, Chantal Bovell, Carlae Trott, and Monique Warte, to exclaim that art is similarly valuable "because you get messy!" Inspired by the fact that the designs on their pots will be displayed publicly at the airport many of the students, including Filipe Carrero, have chosen art as a possible career.

Ms Ball-Burgess, whose team has assessed the artistic growth of the students, boasted that after having collected the data from local schools, she found that these students have an overall higher creativity level than those of the international schools that the data was tested against, and concluded that, "We, as Bermudians, are naturally creative people".