CONTRIBUTORS Transforming Coventry into utopia
A group of pupils at Parkgate School have been part of an unusual project that brings together sculpture, STEAM, civic engagement and environmental issues. Their city is in the throes of large scale city centre regeneration which will not be complete until 2032. Familiar Coventry landmarks will have disappeared by the time these learners finish their education, but the plans promise affordable homes, green spaces, retail and leisure in the heart of town.
Lucy Tomlins is a sculptor and Founding Director of Pangaea Sculptors’ Centre. She has been working with Futures Trust, which has six secondary and four primary schools in Coventry, Nuneaton and Leicestershire. Her project has two main elements. She takes children out of school to look at the built environment and to learn about design, materials and sustainability in the real world. Then, learners work with a professional artist for half a day per week for six weeks and create artworks that are relevant to their school or local area. Parkgate children had a tour of key city centre buildings and discovered that the library was part of a former regeneration project, transforming it from the Locarno Ballroom. They heard about future developments and planned what their version of the city would look like.
Placemaking and urban mining
The Parkgate group also saw some of the early demolition work as one major city centre car park has already disappeared. This feeds into two areas of sustainability: urban mining and the circular economy. Could the building materials be reused? At present, we don’t have the infrastructure to clean up the bricks and other components and to certify carbon savings. Perhaps companies will set-up in Coventry in the future, if there is enough demand. In the meantime, sculpture could have a role to play. ‘Placemaking’ figures in the government’s levelling up agenda. It is defined as “shaping public space that harnesses the ideas and assets of the people who use it” and it is one aspect of building a sense of community. The materials needed for small scale temporary structures such as an installation or statue would be relatively easy to salvage. It would be a low risk venture and the artefacts could be testbeds for carbon capture. It’s not happening yet in Coventry but Lucy is keen to explore this further with developers.
Making sculptures
Back at Parkgate School, children worked in groups creating their ideal city. Unsurprisingly, it featured many food outlets – KFC next to McDonald’s, a Costco, a pizza place, a fish and chip shop and several branches of Greggs. But some suggestions were more ambitious. Could there be a zoo, a seaside area, a beach shop so they could buy the right gear, a concert hall ‘where Taylor Swift could perform’, and a centre for gaming? With safety in mind, they had incorporated a police station and a fire station. Their plans were inclusive, with a school for disabled children, a daycare centre and ‘a place for adults to chat’.
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They used design techniques such as architectural model-making to explore their ideas in 3D. This brought in maths, weights and measures and chemical processes because there is an exothermic reaction when you mix plaster with water. “In the next session, they demoulded their cast buildings, and then cleaned up and finished their sculptural forms”, said Lucy. “This led to conversations such as: Would you prefer to live in the centre or on the edge of town? Do you want to be in a block of flats? Who wants to be near a green space?” Each school involved in the programme has a final session to present their ideas and sculptures. As part of this, the Parkgate group created a game with the help of some staff. They pulled pieces of paper out of a hat. Each piece had a role written on it such as global developer, local developer, environmentalist, local resident, a member of the planning authority. They had to come up with arguments for and against proposed building development changes to the city they had created. Some spoke from a personal perspective. One girl said: “But I live near there and I don’t want to be moved.” Others talked about economics: “That would bring a lot of jobs into the city.” Those in city planner roles had the last word on what would stay and what would go.
Outcomes from the project
Parkgate was one of the first schools to take part in the project. Building on earlier pilots, Pangaea is currently working with one secondary school, Coundon Court, and two primary schools, Keresley Grange in Coventry, and Camp Hill Primary in Nuneaton. Industry collaborators now include Shining3D, makers of 3D scanners; Penta Patterns, manufacturers of patterns, composite and carbon fibre moulds; and global designer Marchant Cain, so later projects have had access to sophisticated technology.
The programme has spawned training developments, too. Lucy, a professional sculptor, found it tested her existing skills set to stand in front of a class for the first time. She realised that artists and teachers need training to develop new skills. There is now specialist training for artists to deliver in schools, while teachers have benefited from hands-on workshops in 3D media and have tried out digital headsets and mixed reality making. Now, Lucy hopes to roll out this programme nationwide.
For further information, visit: u
pangaeasculptorscentre.com
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