Community Arts! Yeah!

The Hunter and the mermaid leading the parade

The parade- lanterns made in the school and community work shops

Putting the finishing touches on my mermaid

Mermaid Sculpture, showing willow frame work

In the past year I have been getting more involved with Community Arts work in the Glasgow Area. In Autumn 2010 I went to work with the Carrick Rural Arts Group on their yearly Festival of Light and so re-located to a "luxury" caravan outside Girvan in South Ayrshire. 8 weeks working with willow in primary and secondary schools, community workshops, the scouts and local youth clubs to name a few resulted in the Lantern parade through Girvan in early November. As well as the workshops, I worked with artists Cassandra Barron and David Powell on creating and choreographing sculptural lanterns to lead the parade fitting the them, Lore and Legend. Willow turned out to be quite an interesting and maleable material to work with and despite being pretty new to working on large scale (at least double me!) sculpture, getting a crash course in welding and basic "electrician-ing" and the torrential rain on the evening of the parade, I was pretty pleased with the results, and it was nothing like the wickerman!