Project Wind Power aligned cultural education and place-making ambitions for Great Yarmouth, connecting the town’s young people to their local cultural and industrial heritage and to renewable energy that is increasingly globally important and locally significant, for sustainability, the built environment and for employment opportunities. It worked with schools and Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust plus artists and practitioners for a project that mixed workshops, presentation, a live, youth-led animation in the public realm and created a lasting legacy in the Venetian Waterway and Gardens – connecting the project to the local landscape/seascape.
In November 2019 FlipSide invited local primary and secondary schools to take part in the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths) project exploring everything wind powered. At the heart of the project was the design and creation of a new kinetic sculpture by artist David Watkinson to celebrate the restoration of Great Yarmouth’s historic Venetian Waterways.
Working alongside St George’s Theatre the project began with an artist workshop where young people from 3 primary schools, 1 secondary and 1 PRU met the artist and learnt about the background of making an artwork powered by wind, as well as the history and importance of wind to Great Yarmouth with experts from the Wind Energy Museum.
Flipside also coordinated schools workshops lead by Paul Gionis, award-winning D&T teacher and toy maker extraordinaire, using design and engineering principles to fuse science and art to construct and test out their very own land yacht.
Project Wind Power culminated in a dynamic art installation where the children were invited to explore wind power in action as they tested out their creations from the workshop in a land yacht race along the seafront and visited David’s sculpture as it was unveiled at the Venetian Waterways, creating a vibrant, visual response to the on and off-shore wind turbines that loom large in the local landscape.
In total 127 children joined us at the Waterways.
View the video filmed on the day of the unveiling