Draw a Flower to Present to the Queen

Draw a Flower to Present to the Queen was a huge project which was devised and completed within a very short space of time. Artists Kate Dyer, Jo Dacombe, Sophie Cullinan and I met to discuss what could be made to delight The Queen as she passed a very large expanse of concrete wall during Her  Majesty's Diamond Jubilee visit to Corby in the 14th of June. The initial proposal was to have a drawing competition and to reproduce three of the best drawings. I thought it a shame that only three children's work would be used if this idea was adopted. My recent involvement with a Jubilee Woods Tree Planting and the Royal interest in gardens and gardening made me suggest that children in Corby could be invited to draw or paint a flower to become part of a series of digital print silk wall hangings. This format would ensure that many more images made by the children could be incorporated. We wanted schools to encourage their pupils to look at real flowers or photographs of real flowers. To help with this I created a set of images on Flickr incorporating lots of different types of flowers captured in my garden and on my travels. A template and set of instructions was created and circulated to all the schools and within a very short space of time flowers of all kinds came flooding in to Corby Community Arts HQ! Jo and I used some of our allocated Beanfield time to work with children in the Nursery and Kate and I visited Year 6 pupils at Cottingham Primary School. We were delighted with the volume and quality of the work submitted and hugely grateful to the participating schools who made sure that as many children as possible took part. Kate and team of amazing volunteers scanned the images and then Kate laid them out in a huge grid - a long process but the end results were beautiful. Not every image could be incorporated on the hangings but every child's name was entered into a draw to choose two people to present a bouquet to the Queen and every child has been credited in the information board. My photographs don't really do justice to the work but give a flavour of the end results but the hangings are currently on display inside the Core.

Kate Dyer

View from above during installation

Sweet Treats

There has been lots of activity and public engagement in and around the Cube in Corby just recently. On the 24th of July I was one of a host of volunteers handing out postcards, badges and jelly beans in exchange for memories or stories connected with the town. The postcards were images taken from the Our Corby photographic archive and are part of a larger Our Corby project and Corby's Cultural Olympiad. We were out in glorious sunshine and people seemed more than happy to share their stories, they also didn't seem to mind being approached by a strangely dishevelled woman wearing a a bright yellow T shirt with the Our Corby logo as a skirt.

The space outside the Cube is rather lovely, although one gentleman recalled that the land had originally belonged to a farmer who was bemused by the plans to build the first new town centre on the land as it was the windiest spot in Corby! That afternoon the breeze was welcome, but it's tendency to blow our postcards out of our hands wasn't! There was a real air of celebration plus a brass band, drama in the form of a specially commissioned play Heritage, poetry from Writer in Residence Joel Stickley and Kevin Fegan and the second screening of the film 24 Hour Corby

This week there is a rather gorgeous vintage Airstream caravan parked outside the Cube, which has been converted into The Knowledge Emporium where sweets are traded for knowledge recorded in the Big Book of Everything We Know. As I was working in my studio today I couldn't resist taking a peep inside this beautiful machine, it's well worth a visit. On Saturday there will be readings from the book.

The interior has a magical quality, there's a circular table with curved seating and brightly coloured cushions at the rear of the van and from there you can see a tantalising array of classic penny sweets.

Once seated you are invited to write in the Big Book of Everything We Know, have a chat with the lovely hosts and then you can choose your bag of goodies.

As schools are closed for the summer and the Cube is so close to the swimming pool, the canny children are making the van a regular stopping point, but this isn't just for children, adults will be warmly welcomed too.