Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust Collaboration Work
Stories of St. John's: Elephants
During the early stages of the 'Be Anything Do Anything' project two opportunities to gain extra experience arose as a result of attending a 'Say It With Stitch' sewing session held at Great Yarmouth Library on Valentines Day 2019;
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Say It With Stitch Great Yarmouth
The first opportunity was to assist in a Say it With Stitch workshop at the Norfolk and Norwich Makers Festival at the Forum, Norwich on Saturday 23rd February 2019 (see the blog)
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Stories of St. John's project with the Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust
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The second was collaboratively working on the Stories of St. John's project with the Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust, by preparing and delivering a collage workshop for school children and designing and creating a project blog, which was a requirement of the Heritage Lottery Fund. A reconnection was made with Carol Desborough of the Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust at the Valentine's day sewing session; after previous historic connections through involvement within the St John's Kneeler Cushion Project, stitching sessions for the community textile collage; also Carol being a former student of University of Suffolk graduating in 2018 with a BA in Textile shared a display space with first year FDA Commercial Arts Students in May 2018 at their exhibition at the Old Shoe Factory, St Mary's Yard, Norwich. The project offered up the opportunity to assist in running a children's art workshop to create collaged Elephants to be displayed in Great Yarmouth Library between 23rd April - 1st May 2019 at part of the larger exhibition surrounding the Stories of St John's.
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The Stories of St. John's is a Heritage Lottery funded project led by the Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust, that aims to conserve some of the special historical papers and documents found at St John's Church during it's restoration, leading on to exploring and recording people who once used the church. The projects aims are to bring together the history and stories of people past and present who have connections to St. Johns Church, Lancaster Road.
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Woodlands Primary Academy, Bradwell were approached to host the workshop where some of the children had already been involved in the 'Be Anything Do Anything' project, the school welcomed the opportunity and the workshop was planned for the afternoon of 2nd April 2019.
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Preparation for the workshop began with a series of meetings with Miss Howse (headteacher of Woodlands Primary Academy) and Carol Desborough between 18th-28th March, where student numbers and colour pallets were discussed and agreed.
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The story of the Elephants in the garden of St Johns can be found on the Facebook page . The story dates back to sometime during the 1980s-1990's so it was decided to use a colour pallet from this era, utilising patterns of this time also. To link the collages to other displays within the exhibition other patterns were also used including silver foil to reflect that used in the community textile collage but also the silver darlings, brown paper to match the scroll which the works will be mounted, music from hymn sheets taken from St John's church and pages from prayer books discovered at St. John's which once belonged to soldiers of the borough during the first world war.
Inspired by this story and local artist Peter Rodulfo’s painting ‘Returning The Elephants 2018’; which depicts the Great Yarmouth Arts Festival Elephants passing St. John’s. The project aimed to create a collection of collaged artworks which have the basis of a drawing by Rodulfo with students from Woodlands Primary Academy, which will be exhibited alongside Peter’s painting ‘Returning The Elephants 2018’.
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'Returning Elephants' 2018
by Peter Rodulfo
Several example images were created to inspire the students and thirty work packs were prepared for the session each containing the paper pieces with different quantities of each paper, an elephant picture created by artist Peter Rodulfo and a glue stick. Carol's vision to have the children's names, alongside names of people on the baptism scrolls/ cradle rolls restored will form the centre piece of the display. The names were written on brown tags as a way of remembering the people from the past and reinforcing the myth that an Elephant never forgets.
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On the 2nd April twenty-four children were in attendance from year groups 3-6. They initially started by writing names on the display board, they were then set to work creating their collages. The children were very busy and productive during the hour and a half session and created some varied and colourful works. The children's finished their works by signing their name, the works were mounted on grey paper and displayed on rolls of brown paper at Great Yarmouth Library between 23rd April to 1st May 2019.
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During the session the children showed great enthusiasm when Carol told the story behind the project of the Elephant breaking the wall of the church while reaching to get a polo. Carol brought along preserved Cradle Rolls from the church which she encouraged the children to look at with care, she showed the children the tools which would be used during the preservation process and allowed the students to gently use these tools on the precious documents.
Workshop session
Elephant Display at Great Yarmouth Library
The Blog
Whilst working on the project a further opportunity arose to create a blog page for the project which was a requirement for the Heritage Lottery Funding, the blog can be found at; http://www.storiesofstjohns.wixsite.com/blog, along with further photos of the children and the exhibition. This proved to be a paid opportunity and has potentially opened up new avenues to explore with regard to website design.