Snow and Lights in action
By Arran Todd - Shift Supervisor, Hull St Stephens
In March 2011, I began my project Snow and Lights funded by the Starbucks Partner Fund. I was given £2000 so I could get the necessary equipment to help me create artwork that would bring together school children from around the world.
I collected 10,266 paper snowflakes from children at primary schools from the local area here in Hull, as well as in London, Switzerland, Namibia, Qatar, India, New Zealand and USA. These snowflakes were for a video installation that would be incorporated into Hull's Christmas Light Switch-On, 24th November. With more than 20,000 people in attendance it was a fantastic night for all those who were involved.
The snowflakes will soon feature as a static installation at Hull University with the possibility of touring the work across the country over the winter. In early December I will be awarding one of the local Hull schools £500 towards art equipment for their school, and every school who participated will receive a framed snowflake as a “thank you” for taking part.
From start to finish this project has been a fantastic journey and I've met some fantastic people along the way, who I hope to work with again. I've learnt a great deal in this process and the future looks incredibly exciting for me as a result. I've recently had a meeting with the Arts Council and pending funding approval, I have an opportunity to create some artwork for the Olympic Torch route in June 2012.
With Snow and Lights now available to view on www.snowandlights.com , I have now started work on Snow and Lights 2012. The idea will be very similar but with more accessibility globally. I also hope to acquire enough funding so I can visit as many of the schools who participated as possible.
Quotes from participating schools
“It has been such a wonderful activity to do with the children. I've done snowflakes lots of times in the past, but doing it this way, for a global community project and being able to decorate the snowflakes however they fancied, has really appealed to the children. We talked about the uniqueness of each snowflake...and how, like children, regardless of past and future there will never be an identical snowflake."
Stephanie Llanes Money, Geneva English School, Genthod, Switzerland.
“Doing the Snow and Lights project has been so much fun that I can’t get the children to put down their scissors in their free time :)”
Gauri Bhargava DPS International India
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