Island 2000 Trust Blog

Sunday dawned bright and blue despite the rotten forecast from the day before and an intrepid band had soon assembled down on Small Hope Beach for the 3rd annual SandmanSnowman event. The great thing about that bit of the Shanklin esplanade is that there are so many people out and about anyway and sure enough we soon had some game passers-by joining in. There were carrots and coal and lashings of hot chocolate, all the necessary ingredients for an excellent day and sure enough wonderful creations soon began to sprout from the sand. Take a look at the Flickr gallery to see them all:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandmansnowman/

Thank you to the ‘little angels’ at east Cowes Primary School who have made this fabulous Christmas Tree for the hoardings in East Cowes.

Last weeksaw the official launch of a new public artwork for Sandown, ‘U R Here’ created by Ventnor based artist Nathan Holt (www.myspace.com/iam8theincarn8). The piece is situated at Eastern Gardens on Sandown Seafront and was initially inspired by the natural lines and contours of Sandown Bay. It is a fresh, bold, bright and positive design which we hope will increase the sense of place to the area and be a welcome investment into the local public realm. It incorporates the sun rising from the East above Culver Cliff and the sun setting in the West over Luccombe.

Nathan produced the artwork in enamelled steel during a residency at the AJWells studios based in Newport using a combination of techniques including spraying, screen printing and hand painting. The 5 large steel panels were then fired twice at over 800°c. The medium of vitreous enamel allows the artwork to be displayed permanently outside as it has an exceptional resistance to all the elements. Using enamel also means that the colours are fade resistant and those of us who were there for the launch witnessed their amazing intensity as the October sunlight really made the colours sing.

AJ Wells produce all the signage for the London Underground and many of the familiar Tube Line colours were used in the artwork. We’ll have an image indicating them here on the blog sometime soon. The company very kindly also produced, with Nathan, a limited edition set of enamelled coasters to celebrate the artwork. (VentnorBlog had a number of these which they are giving away as a competition if you want to get your hands on one).

The artwork is the part of a project called ‘What if?’ which asked local people what artwork they would like on the Island’s Esplanades. The most original and intriguing ideas were compiled into the ‘What if…?’ Book and then Island 2000 entered the competitive Art+ Awards to get funding to help start making some of the ideas a reality. As part of the process Eastern Gardens was regularly brought up as a site that would be ideal for attention and an injection of creativity. Because of the nature and exposed positioning of the site it was a challenge to come up with a solution that might be practical, attractive and the correct scale and ambition to work within the space.

Art Plus is a competitive award scheme led by Arts Council England, South East and the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) which seeks to improve our environment - whether streets, schools or other public spaces – by including the creativity of artists in their design. It is an awards scheme for ideas for innovative public art projects that could take place in the south east. www.artscouncil.org.uk/artplusaward

Many thanks to all those involved in the realisation of this project in particular Nathan Holt, Ced Wells, David Knight and Stuart Marlton.

More images of this and other projects are on our Island 2000 Arts Flickr site

We are running a street art project for youngsters in East Cowes to gain drawing, painting and design skills which will result in the creation of new artwork for the hoardings. We’ve started by doing some introductory sessions at Osborne Middle School sketching ideas and letter forms onto large sheets of paper as practice. As you can see, it turned into a real riot of colour. We’re going to be working with the local youth clubs in the coming weeks.

Don’t forget it’s the Big Draw this Saturday 10am-1pm down near St James’ Church East Cowes (see previous post below).

The Big Draw – Saturday 18^th October, 10am- 1pm

We are holding another Big Draw event on the blue hoardings near St James’ Church, Church Lane (where we did it last year). The broad theme this year is to create a giant East Cowes Town portrait and is your chance to make your mark on the hoardings.

The Big Draw is a nationwide event which aims to get everyone drawing, it’s fun, free and not about being a superb draughtsman but about having a go, so bring the family and get stuck in. All pens, pencils, papers etc will be provided.

All young children must be accompanied by an adult and if it’s wet we’ll reschedule for another day.

Sat 12th July saw the launch of the first ‘Children’s Guide to the Isle of Wight’. It was held at Quay Arts in Newport and was endorsed by a Royal visit from Queen Victoria no less.

The Children’s Guide is a candid and colourful book written, illustrated and edited solely by Island Children and reflects their views about the places they like the most, the places they like to eat and the things that they most like doing on the Island.

For any visiting family the guide gives a real insiders view about what makes the Island special and what you might like to do on your visit.

There were two activities on offer, you could make a badge showing your favourite place on the Island and then pin it to our giant Island map. Book designer Jonathan Ward also ran a book making workshop so that you could make your own personal guide book. Our very own Master Chef , Charlotte Ager, made us a beautiful cake to celebrate with too.

Dame Ellen MacArthur sent the team a message of support,
“Hello Everyone, I just wanted to say that I’m really, really sorry that I haven’t been able to come along to cut the cake today and congratulate you on your great Guide. I love all the colourful drawings! I really enjoyed reading it and there were a lot of things I didn’t know before so I learnt a lot and I am looking forward to using it to discover new places on the island. Aren’t we lucky to live on such a great island! Hope to see you all soon, Ellen”

The guide costs £5 and can be brought from Island outlets or directly from Island 2000 with free P&P, follow this link to buy your copy and take a peek at some of the pages: Children’s Guide
Any profits from sales of the guide will be reinvested into future projects and publications for Children on the Island.

Available now! For more information or to purchase online with free delivery please see the Children’s Guide page here.

We’ve teamed up with Biffa and IW Festival and asked artists to decorate 10 bins that will be used as part of the festival this coming weekend. You can see eight of them here, we’ll post pictures of the ninth one, done by Michael Forrest, when we’ve delivered it to the site. The tenth one is the lovely Bee Bin that Aaron Fletcher did which will actually be used as donation bin over the weekend in the Gift to Nature tent. We don’t know where they’ll end up but hopefully they’ll help festival organisers in their efforts to make the festival a more green and litter free place. Dave Badman enlisted help from students at Chale Primary school to do his large bin. After an educational lesson all about waste, recycling and what to do with your rubbish the children designed their own cartoon story based on imaginary festival goer ‘Rocky’, as he says, “Don’t be a litterbug”!

Multi sensory artwork hits East Cowes

Have you seen the painted Alphabet on Castle Street, East Cowes as part of Island 2000 Trust’s No Barriers project? Not only is this a colourful visual treat, passers by can now get their ears tickled too. Artists Aaron Fletcher and Nathan Holt, who painted the alphabet and all the alliterative words to go along with it, are also part of Ventnor based ‘Blank Beats’. They created their very own ‘Alpharap’ rapping the words that are part of the alphabet they’ve created.

Island 2000 have set up a system whereby you can now call free phone 0800 959 6400 and listen to the ‘Alpharap’ down the phone and on the move.

The Island 2000 Arts team said, “We love the idea of this artwork and we don’t think there’s anything else like this on the Island. It’s a temporary multi-sensory public artwork, but more excitingly, it’s street karaoke!”

The track is available to listen to until the end of August 2008. To listen to more Blank Beat tracks log onto: www.myspace.com/blankbeats

Island 2000 were asked to help out in a number of ways with the big green picnic. One of our tasks was to get people to the site, and so it was time to implement Dan’s printing-press-bike once more….. See the video below or click here to view, comment and rate the video on the Youtube site.