Kids Recyclable City Workshop

Kids Recyclable City Workshop

Christchurch children can rebuild a favourite part of their city, or envision and create new buildings, streets and open spaces out of recyclable materials as part of the 6th SCAPE Christchurch Biennial of Art in Public Space. Inspired by the works of South Island artist, Joanna Langford, who uses existing, found or recycled materials in her artworks, children will be encouraged to transform used materials into models of cityscapes for Christchurch’s future.

SCAPE have developed the Kids Rebuild a Recyclable City workshops and activity as an opportunity for children to have some fun and reflect on what they like about their city.

“The programme has been developed so that all Christchurch children can take part” says SCAPE Director, Deborah McCormick. “Our aim is to provide children with the seed of an idea, to encourage them to use found and recycled materials and most importantly their imaginations to develop scenes for a future Christchurch. It is very important to us that all children, whatever their circumstances, can take part in this programme and we’re expecting to see fantastic out-of-the-box thinking from Christchurch’s next generation.”

Spaces are filling quickly in the Kids Rebuild a Recyclable City Workshop which has been developed for six to twelve year olds in collaboration with Creative Junk and The Sustainable Initiatives Foundation Trust (SIFT). The workshops will commence at 10.30am and 1.30pm on Saturday 5 and 19 November at Creative Junk in Addington at a cost of five dollars. Bookings can be made by emailing christine@creativejunk.org.nz.

For those children unable to attend the workshops, and parents looking for school holiday activities for their children, Christchurch City Libraries are distributing a limited number of free Kids Rebuild a Recyclable City packs. Packs contain flat-packed recyclable materials for children to use as a starting point for their creations, a sheet with instructions, and for those with access to the internet, direction to a video at www.scapebiennial.org.nz/2011-video.

MEDIA RELEASE 10 October 2011

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“SCAPE have developed a short video to inspire kids who would like to rebuild a recyclable city”, says Sally Airey, Education and Public Programmes Coordinator for SCAPE. “We want all Christchurch children, whether they have access to the workshops or the packs at the libraries, to be able to see what can be built with recycled materials and their imaginations. We can’t wait to see what intelligent and whimsical creations the children create!”

SCAPE hopes that parents will assist their children to email photos of their creations to SCAPE. Children will have the opportunity to win a $50 voucher from The Drawing Room if their creation is “liked” the most times by fans of SCAPE’s facebook page www.facebook.com/SCAPEpublicart, and SCAPE plan to collate the images of the children’s creations and present them to Christchurch’s Mayor Bob Parker.

Joanna Langford is one of the eight artists who envisioned works for 6th SCAPE. Her work The High Country was previously designed for a site now in the central city’s cordoned-off “red zone”. It is, as yet, un-installed, however negotiations continue to re-site her work. An artist’s visualisation of The High Country can be seen at http://www.scapebiennial.org.nz/artists/joanna-langford.

ENDS

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