Hop, Skip, Jump! - Engagement Activities

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?

Hop, Skip, Jump!

I was approached by Ultimate Holding Company to help with their current commission based in Tunbridge Wells "Hop Skip Jump"
Putlands Leisure centre in Tunbridge Wells will be the home of a new temporary sculptural installation made from recycled trainers, donated by the community. The sculpture will take the form of a chandelier-like hop plant, in reference to Kent's hop growing heritage.
Personal bests will be collected from the community via twitter, e-mail and postcard and these are to be displayed on LED message boards incorporated in the chandelier....

and that's where I come in.

I was asked provide a community engagement project to encourage the users of Putlands Leisure center and the local area. The brief was to create a kit based on the theme "Elevate Your Sole" with which the user could make a pair of wings that would lace onto their trainer.
Having brought me on board after seeing my cross stitch kits, the team thought it would be a nice idea to have sewing kit which would result in a kind of quilted fabric wing to lace onto the shoe. However, after putting together a prototype I expressed my concerns about the complexity of this kind of kit when used by children.
The kit needed to be as simple as possible to complete, with little or no cutting out.
After much stressing over how to make the design work, I settled on the idea of using craft foam and took it to the team who thought this was a good compromise. It also meant I could have the wing shapes laser cut so SAVED MY HANDS.
I was informed that we had ended up with 100+ sets of wings (we had estimated 80 pairs) and so, after designing the packaging and directions, I was tasked with putting the packs together.

LONG TIME TASK. - cut out paper insert, cut and fold instructions, add these and wings to pack, add sachet of glue, place sequins in a small bag before adding to pack, add selection of foam pieces, seal. REPEAT X 108

I am pretty pleased with how they've turned out though, I will bring news of the workshops when they have happened.

 

prelim sketches

f

finalised design

prototype 1 & front/ reverse view

prototype 2

 

prototype 3 & broken down view 

 

directions sheet

 

Packaging insert design

complete pack, front & reverse

Workshops will be running April 24th 3:00-8:00 pm and April 25th 10:00 am-12:00pm

Putlands Sports & Leisure Centre 

Mascalls Court Road 

Paddock Wood 

TN12 6NZ

The Prade

Saturday and Sunday consisted of a lot of running about organising and getting things ready for 1:30.

I helped rig the pirate ship, and sort the pyrotechnics without falling off the bow of the ship or blowing myself up. 

We laid out the puppets on tarps as the grass was wet through from rain. The weather wasn't amazing on Saturday or Sunday but the rain kept off for the duration of the parade.

There was a great turn out both days, and I scared lots of children. 

result

pyros

Laid out puppets

Face paint

The wind meant that, in the name of streamlining, the highest allegorical women on the trikes were  left off

My little dragons

Me as the green dragon

My green man looking awesome

It ain't easy being green.

Midsummer Watch Prep

 Friday's job was to get the puppets and floats into a van, and the larger floats into the market carpark. 

 Vicky and I also organised the rehearsal room, putting out face paints, brushes and water for the people joining in with the parade to use, and taking over the hats for the devil band and jesters. 

This mirror was brilliant

Order of procession

It was bastarding down with rain, the ceiling was leaky

Midsummer Watch - School Workshop

Hey Russell, which is your hou....oh never mind...

On Monday I got the chance to work with the lovely children at Newton School in Chester. Each year, different schools participate in the Midsummer Watch Parade by making work on sticks around the themes of the larger puppets which they walk with during the parade. Newton School, this year, were producing ravens.

The interesting thing about these ravens is that despite their relatively simple construction, each one is very individual and striking, no two are the same at all. It was good to work at troubleshooting and problem solving with the kids, I helped a little with the initial cutting out but after that I didn't really help any more with the construction. When asked if I would cut something out by individual children I encouraged them to do it on their own by suggesting how they might go about it. Some of the kids were much more responsive than others, but that is the nature of small humans. Nobody had a tantrum and the finished ravens looked really great, so in all it was a great success.