Swan Valley Community School, Kent

Landmark Link Programme, 2008

The Research and Development stage of this innovative community engagement programme ran between May and July 2008. As one of five creative practitioners in five secondary schools in Gravesend and Dartford we delivered collaborative workshops exploring and encouraging an appreciation and understanding of the proposals for a 50-meter high sculpture in the Ebbsfleet Valley.

Each school ‘adopted’ one of the artist’s proposals; ours was Mark Wallinger with his white horse sculpture. The group were dynamic, bursting with creativity, energy and ideas; we considered site specificity, conceptual public art, and the site of the sculpture visible from the school’s art room. We had fun making interventions in school, including a pantomime horse roaming the corridors and school grounds and ended our research and development stage with an information event sharing our discoveries with staff and pupils in school.

To visit the Ebbsfleet Landmark site and see a film about our project visit: www.ebbsfleetlandmark.com/schools/swan.html