Jenny Hammond Primary School has received Arts Council England Grant for the Arts funding for an artist-led arts and science project whereby the school community will work with two artists, Sally Labern and Jacques Nimki over a whole year to work with a small group of children, the Bees, as ambassadors for the school and wider community to explore our fears of difference and the unknown, migration, community and things hidden from our eyes, by looking more closely together at our ambivalent relationship with insects.
This metaphor of our anxieties about insects, their ‘hidden’ habitats and the extraordinary things we shall discover together going on all around us, will shape a community conversation about the cultural richness and diversity experienced by living in a place that shares its resources, celebrates differences and welcomes people from all over the world.
Over this next year, we shall be creating thirty pairs of small bronze insects to be split pairings – sited within the school building and grounds and also within the mile wide community area around the school!
The Bees group of 12 children, some being relatively New Arrivals to the school and the Leytonstone / Cann Hall area, will be the ambassadors for the project, walking the mile, visting the jubilee WildLife pond on Wanstead Flats and getting to know their local community in more detail so that the whole community can feel welcomed to join us at the Jenny Hammond Primary for a Community Bronze Casting on our Summer Fete day in July. Artists Mark Sowden and Giles Corby will be helping us with this process which is so exciting; we are looking for sites for the bronze insects within our community too so you may well hear from the Bees as we walk this ‘square mile’….!
In September 2015 we shall also be building a rather wonderful Persicope type room space where the artists Sally Labern & Jacques Nimki will each be siting new works commissioned as a part of the [dis]tinct project which can only be seen using the periscope …
Jenny Hammond Primary and the Bees will be inviting members of our wider community to take part in a Community Power Project, a research based project where we shall invite you to join us in developing the resources and exploring the ideas with us using a variety of resources – just like children do now across the school – at the end of this we shall have an exhibition of all that we have brought together – so watch this space and the invitation to Take Part will be coming soon!!
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