Poppy Project

This project was match funded by The National Lottery and Ikea’s Places called Home funding scheme – during covid in 2022

This project was created to commemorate Remembrance in newton in November 2022. To continue our work on improving the physical spaces in the parish we commissioned Graffwerk to work with us and the community again to create a mural for the storage container that is housed on the Newton Community Centre car park.

Due to covid being on the rise at this phase in the planning (when 25% of the students at the local secondary school were infected or isolating from covid) we had to go for the consultation method once again of ‘multiple choice’, so that residents would vote for their favourite design. The Greater Creative working party were supposed to come up with three ideas, but they got that excited that they actually came up with 7 ideas for Graffwerk to interpret for potential mural designs!

We then posted these designs to every house in Newton early November (886 houses) so they could select their favourite design! Every individual got to select their own choice too

This design was the clear winner with 43 out of 156 of the votes!

Jano from Graffwerk came to paint the winning mural shortly after

Here’s Tony (WP member) and Greater Creative’s project co-ordinator Lisa on the night it was painted. What a change it was too!

We also had three mini celebrations to bring people together too across the project too. We wanted to offer workshops in the day that were for ‘the grown ups’ as a lot of our creative sessions in the parish are usually catered specifically for children or for families to do together. Each of these sessions were led by local textile artist Karen Herrick from Harlequin Arts. Karen worked with two resident groups first to create Textile Poppies. Here’s some of their creations:

Here’s some of the feedback from these workshops:

Wendy Ducksbury a local creative who supports the delivery of the Greater Creative Project facilitated the workshops. Here’s a quote from her about this project:

"Karen delivered the Poppy and Daisy workshops step by step, so even our less confident crafter's managed to create an original and unique piece of textile work. There were plenty of chuckles at each other’s ‘concentrating faces’ but sustained by tea and scones everyone chatted their way through creating a beautiful, framed memory of the session. It was great to see everyone so enthusiastic about using a community space to get together, learn a new skill and create something from scratch."

And because the poppy designs turned out so nice… we did another in spring with daisies!

Karen said

“Such a privilege to facilitate this lovely group of ladies to create rag rug daisies, all going home with wonderfully individual tactile Daisy designs to frame”

Here are some of the comments from our crafters…

“Everyone enjoyed the whole experience, thanks”

“I didn’t think I would be able to get it finished, but now it looks lovely.”

“Count me in for the next session, I’ve had a lovely afternoon”

“This is going on the wall as soon as I get home”