Great Places
Wind Power Project

October/November 2019


FlipSide is delighted to be part of the Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft Great Places scheme.

Great Places is funded by the Heritage Lottery and Arts Council England, supported by Historic England; the Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth Great Places scheme is one of only 16 pilot projects across the UK.

The Great Places scheme enables cultural and heritage organisations to make a step-change in how they work together with other organisations in other sectors to ensure that arts, culture and heritage contribute more to meeting local social and economic objectives.

Wind Power

In November 2019 FlipSide invited local primary and secondary schools to take part in a STEAM project exploring everything wind powered to celebrate the unveiling of artist David Watkinson’s new kinetic sculpture as part of the restoration of Great Yarmouth’s historic Venetian Waterways.

Starting with an artist led group session at St Georges Theatre, children met the artist and learnt about the background of making an artwork powered by wind, as well as the history and importance of wind to Great Yarmouth with experts from the Wind Energy Museum. They also got a chance to make a simple kinetic portrait of their own - with a spooky halloween theme! 

This was followed up by a creative session in school lead by Paul Gionis, award-winning D&T teacher and toy maker extraordinaire, using design and engineering principles to fuse science and art to construct and test out their very own land yacht. Each student was provided with a kit and supported to use basic construction tools such as cutting, drilling and sawing to build a working model. They also designed and created a bespoke logo for the sail

The project culminated in a dynamic art installation where the children were invited to explore wind power in action as they tested out their creations in a land yacht race along the seafront and visited David’s sculpture as it was unveiled at the Venetian Waterways, creating a vibrant, visual response to the on and off-shore wind turbines that loom large in the local landscape.

Artist - David Watkinson
https://davidwatkinsonsculpture.co.uk/

Facilitator - Paul Gionis
https://www.timebubbletoys.co.uk/