New Carnival’s successful funding bid from the Hornpipe Guildhall Trust Portsmouth to work with young people on the Isle of Wight led to ‘Project Projection’, a digital mapped projection onto St Thomas’s Church as part of Ryde’s Merry and Bright event on 8th and 9th of December.
Light Art Creatives from Bournemouth curated the artworks made by local young people and digitally mapped them onto the former Church, which is undergoing conversion to become the new Youth Hub.
All ages involved
Students from Y4 Dover Park Primary School and Y3 St Mary’s Catholic Primary all had a full day of activities exploring the creative possibilities of projection art.
Network Ryde’s young people also took part over evening sessions.
Arts award
Project Projection included an arts award in which young people were able to find out about creative careers in the digital arts. The explored the history of ‘projection art’ which can be arguably traced back to flickering fire cave paintings as well as early shadow puppetry.
Research followed practical activities, playing with an OHP projector and liquid light effects. The young people then looked at mapped projections and each contributed an artwork using local Ryde symbols which was then scanned and used in the digital animation.
Becky, a young person from Network Ryde said,
“I learnt a lot about projections.”
Reflecting Ryde’s heritage
The Symbols chosen reflect Ryde’s heritage, a bird from Appley Towers motto ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way’, a hippocampus sea monster from Ryde Towns crest, formally Ryde Town council’s logo, which reads ‘A healthy beautiful place’, a fish from the lamppost water fountain at the top of town, a star from star street, a circle pattern reflecting the dome in the Royal Victoria Arcade, and a Wyvern Two legged dragon as spotted on Ryde pier’s ironwork and the logo for the Historic Ryde Society.
Brave Island opportunity
In collaboration with Ventnor Exchange’s Brave Island platform, an opportunity to meet with Julian from Light Art creatives and New Carnival was hosted on Thursday 8th December.
Participants were able to see how the projection equipment was set up on site and to get first-hand information about how to go about making and presenting a digitally mapped projection/ animation.
Incredible projections
The projections on St Thomas’s church on Friday 8th looked incredible and could be spotted from far up the high street. Many visited to have a closer look and the children that took part were able to see the final artwork. One child stood watching the entire animation to wait until their artwork came up, proudly telling their parents about it all.
Weather forced the projections inside
Unfortunately, due to the high winds on the Saturday, the projections were moved to The Methodist Church on Garfield Road Ryde.
There was little time for detailed re- mapping, but Julian from Light Art Creations managed to make it work for the space, re-sizing the animation so people could still see the vibrant, colourful artworks the young people created.
Dorrell: I was pleased to be a part of it
Julian Dorrell, director from Light art Creatives stated,
“I really loved the Merry and Bright event, project projection was a great idea and the event itself was very community orientated, I was pleased to be a part of it.”
|A dream come true
New Carnival were delighted to be able to put on this project which had been something of a dream for the Merry and Bright event for the last four years since its inception.
They were really pleased to be able to showcase digital arts creative possibilities to young people, enabling them to have hands on experience in event production, giving them ownership of their contribution.
The funding received from the Portsmouth Guildhall Hornpipe Trust has been invaluable to making all this happen.
For more information, and to download the full event programme, visit the website.
News shared by Hannah on behalf of New Carnival. Ed
