The
premise of my trainer wing kits is to encourage people from the local community to tweet/ e-mail/ post their 'personal best' to the team working on a new sculpture for the center, these will be displayed on LED banners on the sculpture.
We arrived at Putlands at about 2:15pm expecting to be met with a community group, however it became apparent that the commissioning group hadn't really organised anything as they were working on another commission. After discussing the foot-fall and client demographic, and having sat for an hour with only about 6 people milling about/entering the gym, we decided it would probably be best to relocate to the leisure center's sister-center which was closer to Tunbridge Wells town center.
We stayed at Putlands until 5pm, after I had convinced two small girls to part with their personal bests in exchange for a kit each.
Tunbridge Wells Leisure Center was a larger establishment with a swimming pool so we were hopeful to have more people to give kits to.
It was difficult to get anyone to speak to us, at points I felt a little bit like a charity mugger. Despite this, I did manage to convince a few kids to take kits and give their personal bests; mainly by my pose-striking, showing off my totally super-mondo-awesome boot wings.
The next day, we managed to get a table to set up our stall on, and this gave us more success. There weren't many children around, but after explaining the project to mothers and grandparents, there was great interest and uptake of kits.
In all I think we managed to give out about half of the kits I made up, I was disappointed that more didn't go but I don't think that they will be wasted as there will be an opening for the sculpture, and they should be given out then.
Had the commissioning group organised a couple of community groups for us to work with, I think the project would have gone much better; I had taken down with me loads of things to decorate the wings with, and we didn't get to use any of it. I suppose you live and learn.
I'm really pleased with the kits, as were everyone else who saw them - that was my task for the commission, so from my perspective it has gone well. However, I don't know how many personal bests will come from the kits due to the disjointed nature of our engagement; I hope it was in some way successful.
set up in Putlands, ready for a craft group that never was
too cool for school
Trainers collected to be recycled into the main sculpture
Chris demonstrating a kit
how could you not want something from this?
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