Forward Footing in Spalding

Our final Forward Footing walk took place in Spalding.

Invited by artist Carol Parker to visit her Shed at Allotment 17B, we met at the lovely Unique Cafe on Fulney Lane South and walked to the nearby allotments.

Inspired by the aesthetic of the allotment itself, with the use of bamboo cane structures, twine and coloured labels, our group created art interventions around the allotment, resulting in a number of creative collaborations! And, of course, we picnicked at Carol's shed in style, as Carol produced a number of comfy fold up chairs and a picnic blanket!

Thanks to everybody who joined us and making such lovely companions for our final Forward Footing walk.

Next Forward Footing walk - Spalding

Our next and final Forward Footing walk will be around Low Fulney in Spalding, Lincolnshire, on Monday 24th August.

We will meet at 12 noon at the Unique Cottage Cafe
Visit this link for how to get there. Parking is available at the cafe.

We will walk and make art until around 3pm.

Please bring some food to share for a picnic!

There is no charge for this event, but let us know if you're coming by emailing us.

See you there!

Green Patch Celebration

Goodbye Green Patch

Our Green Patch project has now come to an end, all the artworks are installed and the celebratory evening was wonderful. We were delighted to see and hear all the happy faces and great comments about our Residency at the Green Patch, one of the nicest being "I love all the things you have added to the site and you have both become such a part of the Green Patch family". 

Many thanks to the members of the community who took part, all the wonderful volunteers who helped us, to The Green Patch and Groundworks team, especially Lucy, Allison, Nigel, Nikki, Caroline for providing the barbecue and Halloween decorations, Northamptonshire Community Foundation and the Community Development Foundation.

To see all the artworks created during the project please follow the link to our Flickr Sets which includes the Summer House Weather Installation, Rare Flowers sculpture, the pond sculpture, our large printed images around the office and stores, a bird mobile made from plastic bottles and work made with the community including signs and bunting! Lots of colour to keep the Green Patch bright and cheery into the winter months.

The work is staying permanently at the site, so do visit when you are in the area.

Thank you Green Patch, we had a lovely time! We won't forget you.

A view from the Weather Installation

The community gathering for the celebration by the polytunnels

A ray of light (inside the weather installation)

A shower of rain (inside the weather installation)

A fabulous end to a fabulous Residency!

What's the Buzz - Latest Update on Green Patch Projects

We've been busy finishing the Weather Installation and creating our sculptures for the Green Patch, we're buzzing with excitement as more things are almost ready for our celebratory event. We can't show you everything as we want it to be a surprise but here are a few images of work in progress!

Time for tea!

Birds of summer

Today was our final public workshop at the Green Patch. We were really pleased to welcome back Lily and her mum again, and 3 new families joined us too.

Lots of activity today, we had signs to finish off and the children really enjoyed painting them.

We also made birds, upcycling plastic packaging into beautiful colourful bird collages which we will perch in the trees around the Green Patch.

Quinn enjoyed exploring and playing on the mud piles!

and everybody sat on the blue mat to make their birds.

Here is the team with their finished birds!

 

Carole and Jo also did some more work on their installation for the summer house.

We are designing some new windows for the summer house, and Jo had made a prototype. It fitted perfectly! Next, we started thinking about how we might redesign the windows in the door panels too.

 

Carole had been busy making other parts out of acrylic for the installation too, and had been finishing off the bunting made in our earlier workshops, sewing down the edges and putting on the backing fabric. They're looking really stunning now!

Well, that's it for our public workshops for now, because we need some time to get all the work made in our workshops installed around the Green Patch site! And we need to make some more work of our own - so keep following the blog for more updates soon -

 - and of course for news of the final celebration when we will invite everybody back to see all the work hanging, installed and bringing colour and art to the Green Patch!

A New Monday

It was a beautiful afternoon at the Green Patch, the overcast morning sky was replaced by soft clouds and gentle shades of blue. Our early arrivers happily set about watering the young trees in the new orchard and as more arrived the raised beds were also given some attention. The ducks and chickens were visited and Emily, the Green Patch cat was given plenty of fuss.

This also gave participants an opportunity to explore the Green Patch growing spaces and choose plants or elements they would like to draw during the course of the afternoon.

As the afternoon was mild and breezy we decided to forego the gazebo

There was a great sense of peace and relaxation

We worked with fabric dyes and wax crayons to create bold resist paintings

all age groups from 3 upwards enjoyed the activity

and there was plenty of time and space to make more than one image.

Esther's pencil sketch of the landscape as viewed from the Summer House

Day Four - a weather installation

Today we started making parts for our weather installation for the summer house at the Green Patch allotments.

Weather has been a big feature in our residency so far, it's a physical struggle at times to create work in gusty wind, sudden heavy rain and hot sunshine, all of which we have experienced in one week! Of course weather is important for growing and the allotment too, and every day we are all hoping for enough rain to refill the depleted water butts, followed by hopes for enough sunshine to ripen everything, wishing for that perfect balance and making constant adaptations here and there to protect plants from drying out or from becoming waterlogged.

Therefore we felt that we should create an installation in the summer house to reflect aspects of weather. We spent the day cutting, heat bending and machining pieces of acrylic sheet. We'll start installing the pieces tomorrow.