UCI 2019 - Land Art

"4 weeks before the event, we found out that there was not many people along the route who were planning Land Art, so obviously we weren’t going to let the event come through Thorne without us putting on a show."

"We collected single use plastic bottles with the help of pupils at Thorne Green Top, Marshland Primary Academy and Brooke Primary Academy."

"We worked with Lindsay Blackham at Marshland to create the design and see how the children could be involved. Together with Lindsay we encouraged schools to take part with us, and had responses from Brooke Primary Academy and Thorne Green Top."

"We believed the best way to involve the children was to run an environmental project alongside the UCI event. This was relevant for the following reasons:-

• Trust22 had just launched the Refill UK scheme in Thorne and Moorends encouraging local businesses to become ‘refill stations’ to fight the war on plastic
• Children from the schools regularly join trust22 on litter picks and have commented previously about the amount of plastic bottles we pick up
• Mayor Ros Jones was due to announce the climate emergency as part of the youth climate strike"

"Children created banners to showcase their message about plastics. These were displayed from the balcony at Civic Office on 20^th Sept during the Youth Climate strike. The banners depicted the perils of single use plastic, showing the effect on sea life and the world in general with catchy slogans like ‘be part of the solution, not the pollution’ and ‘don’t be drastic, say no to plastic’"



"All together the children saved more than 3,000 plastic bottles which were then used to create the land art."



"Volunteers created the Land Art in Thorne Memorial Park at 4:45am. Due to the tight turnaround to put this together we had one chance to get it right, and no way of seeing it from above until the helicopter crews did."



"Volunteers assisting me on the project were:- 

• Dave Knott (Trust22 Trustee)
• Stefanie Langfield (Trust22 events volunteer)
• Lisa Hallam (Trust22 litter pick volunteer)
• Craig Ellis (Thorne Moorends Town Council Deputy Mayor)
• Tracie Lake (Trust22 volunteer)"

The rest is history – the art looked phenomenal, the children were ecstatic and we got 2^nd place in the competition!


 
"One thing I do want to get across is what great role models these children are."

"Somehow we pulled it off and I think it’s because of the important message we had to deliver."

"The children knew we would only ever have an event like this once, and that it was being broadcast to 250m homes. At a time when protest marches and youth activism gets so much negative press, and a time when our children feel the need to miss education and teach us adults about the impact we have on their planet I think it’s absolutely incredible for them to be so responsible and do something so brilliantly positive."

"We tried to show them a different way of getting their message across, they grasped that opportunity and it’s absolutely paid off. It’s not about me, or the other volunteers. We’ll campaign all day long with or without the world’s approval, but to these children having their message heard and celebrated is massive. It’s definitely going to encourage them to take more action and join us in future."