The first ever Corinbank Crafternoon went off with a bang on Saturday 21 January with much creativity and merriment had by all who participated. A crew of people from a range of backgrounds and ages in the community joined together at LEAD services in Cook to create some eye-catching decorations for the festival from recycled materials. Lots of brightly coloured decorations were made including plastic bottle painted flowers, paper cranes, toilet paper roll sculptures, papier mache planets and decorated face masks.
It was very much a collaborative effort with participants learning, helping and influencing each other. Initially I provided some ready made examples of works that people could follow and people went above and beyond with their own great innovations and ideas.
Howie, for example, created one huge undulating and multicoloured toilet roll sculpture which incorporated lots of other bits of recycled materials. Michelle (aka Alice Snow) created some unusual and delicate flower shapes out of plastic bottles and painted them with striking colour combinations. Monica had the genius idea of spray-painting the edges of paper to create a striking two-tone contrast for the paper cranes. Sarah brought some completely new ideas including her miniature floating angels. Sarah also suggested spray-painting finished objects in a box rather than out in the open for best coverage – I woulda never thought a that! Brian was a papier mache machine and Anne, Rachel, Reds and Sophie created paper cranes of all sizes – XXL to XXS.
LEAD clients Cal and Scott created some really funky masks and provided much entertainment and hilarity in the morning session. Cal’s knowledge of 80’s music was just phenomenal while Scott entertained us with his abundance of dad jokes. In the afternoon lots of children descended on the workshop to create lots of bejewelled and feathered masks ready for some lucky Corinbankers to wear during the festival.
It really was a great day and hopefully there will be many more crafternoons to come. Everyone made a great contribution and a big thank to all involved and also to LEAD Services for lending us their rooms.
The decorations will be on display for all to admire from the 2-4 March at Corinbank festival.
I was thinking of making some colourful flying bird creations out of old wire and clothes to hang over paths and outside (or inside) events. Who do I contact to see if this would be OK. I’m coming up a couple of days early to lend a hand so maybe we’ll just sort it out then
Hi Sam, email Maria at visualarts@corinbank.com – she’s our coordinator for site art! Sounds amazing!