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”!
Here’s a better shot of the Yarrow Broomrape with AlarmGnome temporarily disabled. It really is a very beautiful thing, much more so than many of the broomrapes which tend to look dead even when they’re alive. The reason for is that they have no chlorophyll and so aren’t green at all. They don’t need to make food in the usual photosynthetic
way because they are in fact obligate parasites living off the food and water in neighbouring plants by tapping into their roots. Many broomrapes are very specific and are named after their hosts. Yarrow Broomrape parasitizes yarrow - a very familiar plant which makes it all the stranger that this broomrape is so rare.
One of the island’s rarest flowers is in safe hands. The rather beautiful Yarrow Broomrape (the purple flower in the picture) has acquired ‘AlarmGnome’ technology thanks to a grant from the SBPF (Spurious Botanical Projects Fund). If anyone should approach the plants AlarmGnome issues a first warning: ” Step Away from the Flowers”. If this doesn’t ward them off and they get still closer risking harm to the Broomrape, then AlarmGnome gives a second warning of “Back Off Now, or Suffer”. If this still doesn’t deter the deranged intruder then AlarmGnome becomes AttackGnome and you really don’t want to know what happens next.
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
The Education and Community team have been busy installing raised beds in gardens on Pan Estate. A joint project with Medina Housing Association is encouraging residents to “grow their own” by providing a raised bed, soil, vegetable seeds and a tool kit for up to 50 households in the ward. Most of the beds are now installed and ready to be planted up for the growing season, and Island 2000 will be holding a series of drop-in sessions throughout the summer offering advice on gardening using raised beds and suggesting recipes that will use produce from the garden.
Three of us were lucky enough to go on a Dormouse Ecology course this month, held in Cheddar by the Mammal Society.Dormice are European Protected Species, due to their sadly diminishing numbers, and it is illegal to handle them or check their nestboxes without a licence (renewed annually).
Once they come out of hibernation in May, dormice look for places to use as daytime rest areas, as they’re nocturnal creatures, and also to start building their summer nests in. We were taken up to Cheddar Gorge to see a survey area where 50 nestboxes have been provided. After a few false starts (other creatures such as Wood Mice or small birds are partial to nesting in the boxes too!), we were lucky enough to find 3 occupied boxes.One of the cute critters is shown here – undoubtedly a huge ‘ahhh’ factor involved!
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.
Well, it is now upon us. The Big Green Picnic kicks off in about two and a half hours. Island 2000 have been busy preparing all kinds of stuff, from lollipop signs to entrance way arches. Gift to Nature will be there throughout the day, with an opportunity to see video clips of our work and have a chat with staff about our Friends scheme and the projects it helps bring to life. Magpie has turned some rubbish into incredible creations which will be on show around the Biffa waste displays. There will also be some interesting on-street signage, but more of that after the event…. I’m not going to post any images of the amazing creations that will be there, as you should come and see them for yourself. County Hall Car Park, Newport from 10-6 Saturday and Sunday. Oh and there’s lots more interesting stuff from other people too!
We now have a lovely new logo for our Magpie project created by Ventnor based illustrator Nicola Winsland.
Magpie is all about reusing and recycling scrap or unwanted materials in a creative way. This can be for a whole range of purposes and often results in a bit of ‘upcycling’ (which is a rather clunky term meaning making things better than they were in the first place!).
Most recently we have been asked to create some signs for the Council’s Big Green Picnic this weekend. Fortunately we have some expert Magpie scroungers on our I2k staff and we’ve managed to get a hold of some old lollipop sticks that aren’t used for school crossings any more and we’ve made them into handy signs that will be used to help direct people to the site.
Look out for Dan’s giant ‘Welcome’ arches on the day too.
We’ve also been working with the IW Festival and Biffa to get artists to decorate some large bins that will be used during the festival. One of them will actually be a giant collection box for bee conservation work so we thought who better do design it than artist and actual Bee (albeit the musician kind) Aaron Fletcher.
Last but not least, The ‘Dolly Mixtures’ exhibition is now up in the Learning Curve Gallery at Quay Arts. The exhibition has been brought together in partnership with St Georges school to help raise awareness and funds for their Dragon project (www.stgeorgesdragon.com) which is a unique project to help increase opportunities for pupils at the school. Catalogues are on sale from Quay Arts or Island 2000 (hannah@island2000.org.uk or 298098 ext 102) for £5 and they include a raffle ticket for a draw on Thurs 29th May where all of the dolls in the exhibition will be raffled off. There’s some real gems in there so make sure you buy your ticket in time.
Dave Dana, dragonfly recorder extraordinaire, has reported 2 very exciting records from the Gift to Nature pond at the sandown Wetland Walk. He found Hairy Dragonfly Brachytron pratense and Four-spotted Chaser Libellula quadrimaculata, both rather scarce on the Island and the former scarce just about everywhere! This is a great reward for the conservation efforts of the Trust, many volunteers and Southern water who own the site. Here’s one of Dave’s fabulous pictures of the chaser.
RSS Feed