Island 2000 Trust Blog

East Cowes Primary students braved the cold January weather to make their contribution to the East Cowes Alphabet on Castle Street under the artistic guidance of artists Nathan Holt and Aaron Fletcher. Reception and Year 1 children got stuck in with paint, sponges and stencils to add to the Alphabet. A is for Apple, H is for Helicopter, S is for Spectacles, Sunglasses and Shades and Z, well Z is for Zombies of course.

The alphabet is part of the ‘No Barriers’ project for East Cowes supported by SEEDA. Look out for more additions to the alphabet and more art on the hoardings in the coming months.

Hello everyone - just a reminder that you can so loads more of our stuff (well quite a lot more - we’re gradually bumping it up) by visiting our Flickr sites for arts, Gift to Nature and conservation:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/island2000conservation/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/island2000arts/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gifttonature

Art Commission Brief

The Island Storytellers are a group of people committed to the oral retelling of stories and poems, whether they be traditional or modern tales. They are organising a storytelling festival, ‘Ferry Tales’, in May 2008. One of the elements of the festival will be a storytelling competition at which storytellers tell stories inspired by a piece of artwork. The Arts Team are working with the group to commission a piece of art for this competition which can be used as a prompt by storytellers.

Submissions are invited by 31st January 2008

www.islandstorytellers.co.uk

www.thatsanotherstory.co.uk

We have been really fortunate to have worked with Arts &Business this year who helped us foster new partnerships with some great Island businesses. We are doubly lucky to have been chosen by them to get a Christmas bonus -

“We are delighted to make our Christmas donation this year to the inspirational arts organisation Island 2000. We are pleased to have supported the work of Island 2000 and its business partners in 2007″. Thank you from us all at Island 2000!

Dan and I at a secret location in the eastern Isle. We were surprised to discover trees with strange root patterns, twisted gnarled branches, and even faces! We were scouting out this jungle for caves and a possible finale to the Vectis poetry competition.

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Did you know that all the London Underground signs are made on the Isle of Wight? (well, most of them). This was one of many interesting things that we learned on our guided tour of the A J Wells factory in Newport. It was far bigger than I’d imagined, with160 people busily producing wood-burning stoves, signs and artworks - in fact almost anything that might be made from metal and enamelled.

They seemed very open to experimenting with new techniques and even make their own enamel glazes by grinding up broken glass and adding various colouring materials. Although most of the production is on an industrial scale, they also often work with artists to create new pieces of work.

Below is a picture of a batch of signs coming out of one of the huge furnaces.

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I’ll look on the signs in a new light next time travelling on the Tube.

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Eve Jackson’s poem ‘Joy’ has now been put up at the Freshwater Bay bus stop. This was the overall winner of the bus stop poems competition and is the last in a series of ten to be cast in bronze and installed at stops round the Island.

It was a bit of a struggle and my attempts to lay nine bricks on top of the pillar to make it tall enough made it look like a scale model of the Tower of Pisa. Wonky as it is though, it’s now there and hopefully for a long time.

These three lucky people were the first to read it after installation, arriving as the quick-drying cement was still wet. I think the younger ones may not have understood much, but it seemed appropriate as the poem is all about children - and they did like feeling the raised text and drawings and were very patient as their mum read it out to them.

Here’s the poem for you to read for yourselves. The numbers at the top are thought not to be original.

Can anyone explain this?

Here’s the latest poem to be installed by a bus stop. Written by Margaret Prior, it is dedicated to the umbrella tree (a large weeping ash?) beside which buses pull up in East Cowes. This tree has marks the epicentre of communal life in the town and the poem recounts the activities that can be observed from its arbour.

It wasn’t easy to find a site where people could not slip, trip, bump into or fall headlong onto the bronze plaque, but thanks to the new owners of the Under The Umbrella Tree cafe, we were finally able to fit it up on a wall facing the tree and bus stop.

If you’d like to see it for yourself, hop on a bus number 4 or 5.

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Felicity Fair Thompson mounts a spirited defence of a beautiful,
rather lonely part of the island in her poem ‘Bleak Down’ which we have now set into the ground beside the bus stop Bleak Down Landfill Site. If you do catch the bus to this spot, you’ll have plenty of time to study and meditate on the beauty of both the poem and the view as only two buses pass here each day.
Hopefully it will provide a few moments’ rest and reflection for walkers making their way along the Worsley Trail too.

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