Since the Project’s first art commission was complete in August 2018, during the Ventnor Fringe Festival, school children have had the opportunity to respond creatively to the Ventnor Giant mural.
Having trained as an Arts Award advisor through Lift the Lid, teacher Clare Wright has been working with a group of Year 6 pupils from Oakfield Primary School in Ryde, using the artist Phlegm as inspiration for their own work.
“Year 6 has been researching a world famous street artist, who has created the Island’s largest mural in Ventnor. It depicts one of the artist’s famous characters holding the town of Ventnor on it’s back or letting it fall into the sea. The inspiration for the mural was the architecture, geography and people of the town. As part of ArtsMark, Oakfield Primary is working with Lift The Lid, a new island wide campaign which aims to foster a sense of pride and passion in Island towns and their cultural heritage. The students’ artwork was temporarily stuck to the wall, under the mural, in Ventnor, before being transferred to our gallery in the school’s Creation Station”
Meanwhile, schools near Ventnor have been working with storyteller Sue Bailey on developing stories about the Ventnor Giant. We hope to share some of these with you in the next few weeks.
If you want to join in the creative fun, then join us at Sandown’s Hullabaloo event on 11 and 12 May, where you can take part in a storytelling workshop with Sue Bailey, or go and watch BearFace Theatre to see what they have developed so far as part of the Newport art commission, with Mountbatten, Barton Primary School and WOW Women’s Centre, based on a story told to them by Sacred Isle‘s Paul Wilson.
