Alton College collaborates with community in partnership with local festival

A community-filled crochet project, talented dancers and local collaboration paved the way for this year’s Alton Arts Festival.

The Festival, which took place between Friday 5 July – Sunday 14 July 2024, aimed to bring together the Alton community alongside holding a range of events from music and literature to theatre and art.  

Alton College, an official partner of the festival kickstarted the ten-day extravaganza with an array of talented dance students and a rehearsed reading of student Orla’s highly acclaimed National Theatre play ‘Just Another Stupid Woman’.

Alongside this, guests were also able to view ‘It’s My Life: The Great Barrier Reef Community Art Project’ which was headed up by Teacher of Art and Design Liz Henley and Teacher of Art, Mark Taylor. The project brought together local schools and organisations, including ‘Creating Crafts and Blooms’, a local crochet group and enabled the community to work together to create artwork aimed to highlight the issue of global warming and bleaching of the coral on the great barrier reef.

The art project also received support from Brewers Decorator Centres in Alton who provided paints for the artwork and The Arts Society and Isle of Wight Area who also kindly funded supplies for the project.

Teacher of Art and Design Liz Henley said:

“I was astonished and delighted by the response to my appeal for crochet coral works at the beginning of the year. Individuals from the Alton community, staff at Alton College, students and friends have contributed everything from hyperbolic crochet forms representing coral life forms, to intricately made seahorses and shells.

I could not have imagined that I would have received so many different and exciting pieces. Some make use of waste plastics and interesting yarns to highlight the plastic pollution which is troubling our oceans, and these particularly interest me as a Textiles Practitioner.

I am proud to have been able to work on this initiative and hope that we will have a lot of interest from the community.”

Assistant Principal for A Levels and Vocational Curriculum Ashley Grute said:

“I am really proud that Alton College is at the heart of the Alton Arts Festival. Our Great Barrier Reef community art project has been a fantastic opportunity to collaborate with the local primary and secondary schools in our area and the outcome of the project is wonderful to see!”

Natalie Randall Programme Leader Arts/Teacher of Drama and Performing Arts added:

“This has been a community project from start to finish and it’s amazing how art can bring people together and deliver such an important message. Special thanks to our brilliant Art and Textiles teachers, Mark Taylor and Liz Henley, for their vision, creativity and hard work. The installation brought us all together and it’s lovely to share this with the community.”

For the remainder of the festival, Alton College hosted events such as Richard Herring’s ‘Can I Have My Ball Back?’ and ‘In Conversation with Laura Bates & Patrice Lawrence’.