Polka Dot at Christmas

Our windows looks lovely - I am sure you see it as you drive past why not stop and come inside

Winter Garden 2

I thought yesterday was great but today is totally amazin. A surreal christmas grotto. We are very happily snowed in

A Winter Garden

The Recycled anti waste garden is really behaving like a real garden now its wilting in the weather but looks amazing in this snow

Christmas at the Polka Dot

The Average British Family throws away 6 trees worth of paper each year (source waste watch)

this piece of work is to re-enforce the message

"Absolute Rubbish" is the Polka Dots own brand of products. All made on the premises from things that people throw away. We have loads of unique and quirky gifts many under £20. Great for Christmas and you will be inspired to recycle more.

Scary Litter Angels Workshops

The last Litter Angel workshop for this year was held at the Polka Dot last week and loads of scary heads and ghostly figures where created by the young artists that attended our workshop

Litter Angels 2010 Winners

The Winning Poster is now on view at all Swale McDonalds

Kacey Unsworth - Bapchild and Tonge C of E Primary School - WINNER for Poster Design

Murston winning Sculpture in the garden

Murston Sculpture Winners


OUR PRESS RELEASE
Nearly 100 people packed the Avenue Theatre last Friday (October 22nd) for a “squash and biscuit” reception before Local MP, Gordon Henderson joined the Mayor of Swale, Cllr Steve Worrall, to present local school children and their schools with prizes in this year’s “Litter Angels” competition.
”Litter Angels” is an anti-litter awareness campaign, which was started three years ago by Gordon Henderson to encourage young people to think about littering and its effect on the local environment by using art as a creative and educational tool. This year the children were asked to design anti-litter posters and sculptures, such as wild flowers, out of discarded rubbish.
The Mayor presented prizes to children from 7 local primary schools and groups that took part in the competition These where Bapchild and Tonge, Murston, Diversity House, St Edwards, St Peters, Eastchurch and Minterne.
The overall winning poster was designed by Kacey Unsworth, who attends Bapchild and Tonge Church of England Primary School. Kacey and her school each received a cheque for £25, which was presented by Matthew Hogben Business Manager from Sittingbourne McDonald’s, who sponsored this year’s competition and will be displaying the winning poster in all their local restaurants.
Murston Junior School won the prize for best sculpture design in their Wildlife garden and Alfie Swetman-Savage from Bapchild and Tonge won a special award for the Under-7 category, which was donated by the Polka Dot Art Gallery, who were co-sponsors of “Litter Angels”.
This year’s competition was organised by well known local artist, Sioux Peto, who said:
“This year has been an amazing success. We were so impressed with the attitude and creativity of all the young people who took part in the competition. It was refreshing how much they all knew about recycling and why they shouldn’t drop litter. It was obvious that they genuinely want to help keep our local environment clean and tidy.
“The standard of work produced was extremely high, professional and imaginative, both in the poster design and the sculpture workshops. It made the judging very difficult.
“I really want to thank all the young people who were involved this year and the schools that let us into their classrooms and encouraged their pupils to take part. We should be proud of them all for their commitment to making our future cleaner and greener.”
Gordon Henderson added:
“Reducing the amount of litter in our streets and parks is the quickest way in which we can make a real impact on our local environment. I started “Litter Angels” because I felt that encouraging primary school pupils to get into the habit of not dropping litter would lay the foundations for a cleaner tidier Britain when they grow up.
“This year’s “Litter Angels” competition was the best ever, thanks to the hard work of Sioux Peto and wonderful support from McDonald’s and the Polka Dot Art Gallery.
“I know that Sioux is already planning next year’s competition and wants to extend it to an older age group. So if you are a local primary school, or, community group who deals with young people from 16 to 24 years of age, and you care about you local community and environment, I would urge you to take part.”
Interested schools and community groups can contact Sioux Peto on 01795 428150 or 01795 521167.


Names of winners and schools:-

Kacey Unsworth - Bapchild and Tonge C of E Primary School - WINNER for Poster Design
Yasir Hussain – Diversity House
Masha Treyakovce – Murston Junior School
Luke Huckle - St Peters Catholic Primary School
Hannah Unwin – Minterne Community Junior School
Taylor Garrod – St Edwards R.C Primary School
Danielle Hales – Eastchurch Primary School

Murston Junior School – WINNER for Sculpture Design

Alfie Swetman-Savage – Special award from Polka Dot Galley for under 7’s

PS Special mention to the lovely Esther Cheesman who was my assistant

A Garden of England Wins Award

The Garden of England has won a SILVER award from Swale in Bloom and Kent Wildlife Trust
We collected the award on Saturday 23rd October at Oare Gunpowder Works and now have our certificate framed in the Polka Dot

Its Eric

Its now the end of Litter Angels 2010

Yes its really sad but I have finished the workshops and we have had an amazing exhibition here at the Polka Dot our walls have been covered as you can see and its being judged on Monday!!!!!
so look out for announcements
Thank you to everyone who has been in to look at the exhibition and to everyone who took part and to Ernie Thurston for helping hang all the work and the photographs
See the School Garden sculptures here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50646987@N06/sets/72157625125447118/

Look whats growing in the garden - Litter Angels at St Peters

Thank you St Peters year 6 for being wonderful. We had a great day designing posters and making flowers which we plantedout in the veg patch
See you all soon

Garden of England opening

On Friday 3rd September A Garden of England was officially opened by the cutting of a big plastic bag ribbon by Deputy Mayoress Sylvia Bennett and Deputy Mayor Cllr Ben Stokes. Many Thanks to them
Special guests where Gordon Henderson MP and Louise Henderson and we announced the launch of the 2010 Litter Angels campaign
Photos taken by Lisa Valder http://www.lisavalderphotography.co.uk/
more of the garden http://www.theimagefile.com/?skin=680402&Action=_VC&id=61808850&ppwd=49747ftp

I presented Gordon with a "10 minute walk" to hang on his office wall. Gordon has always been interested in my work and I am very grateful to him for high lighting the problems of litter in our area his dedication and continuing support of the Arts. Thank you.

Litter Angels Creature workshops

The Last Litter Angels Workshop took place on Wednesday. (I will miss everyone) We had a full house and made creatures and Things!!!! by sewing bits of old fabric, buttons, lace and ribbons. The creation of these new species was great fun and everyone went home with a new friend. We will definitely be doing this again at Half term.

Litter Angels Pot workshops

Again everyone was very busy and creative with dog food cans!!!!!
Yes these cans can be recycled into really useful and beautiful containers

Ramsgate Summer squall

The Polka Dot will be there on Saturday 28th
http://www.ramsgatearts.org/index.html

A garden of England at Re:Bourne

Wow what an amazing 2 days
The Re:Bourne arts Festival in Sittingbourne Hiigh Street was a real success. Thank you to all the people of Sittingbourne that contributed to it and Nimble Fish and the Workers of Art for coming to our town and helping transform it so we could appreciate its true potential.
the Garden grew wonderfully there and got plenty of attention and water!!!!!
There are loads more pics here just click on link
http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/455051817

Litter Angels Workshops - Mobiles

The First of the Litter Angels Workshops took place Wednesday 5th August and everyone made the most amazing mobiles. From found objects and bits of string and wire. The creative movement is alive and kicking here inTeynham
Thankyou to everyone who attended

Re:Bourne -

http://www.rebourne2010.co.uk/
The garden of England project will be at the Re;Bourne Festival in Sittingbourne High Street on Friday August 13th from 2.30pm-5.30pm and Saturday August 14th from 2.30pm-5.30pm
Sittingbourne High Street - The first alley on the lower half of the high street on the same side of street as Roman square

The Polka Dot Artists are Recycling in a different way. why not come and add to the garden? We will be creating new growths on site Bright plastic is blooming in a alley just off Sittingbourne High Street, please join us

Ramsgate Summer squall

http://www.ramsgatearts.org/
Polka Dot artists Sioux and Colin will be at the Summer Squall with A Garden of England creating new and wondrous growths with the people of Ramsgate. This is the first time we have travelled outside of Swale with the project. We are spreading the message. Saturday 28th August. see you al there.

Recycled Art - Plastic Bottle Flowers

A Garden of England is really blooming now
This Saturday we had our last volunteers from Vinvolved and they helped make pots of flowers out of Plastic bottles and packaging

pics at http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/422999512

Litter Angels 2010 and the Polka Dot

I am very fortunate to have met Gordon Henderson now our MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey a couple of years ago. Gordon has always been passionate about the amount of Litter and rubbish that is strewn across our beautiful country. 2 years ago he launched Litter Angels, based on a story he wrote about Eric the Angel who comes down from heaven to help his young friends pick up litter and help inform the public that they are destroying our planet and wildlife. He went into schools with his Swale Community Action Project and enthused the young people to design posters to help emphasis this message. I was his assistant last year. Now Mr Henderson is a bit busy at the Houses of Parliament and the baton has been passed to me at the Polka Dot
We are going into schools in September to deliver workshops: Design a poster and make growths from rubbish.
To start our campaign the Polka Dot is offering Workshops to young people during the holidays
and you are very welcome to join us to make Recycled Art objects
Please book if possible They will be every wednesday through out August. We are also involved with Diversity House and on 1st August and 10th October will be doing workshops with them. See details above.

Artists in the Woods 2010

please click to see more pics of a garden of england growing at Oare gunpowder Works
Colin and myself would like to thank everyone from the Friends of Oare Gunpowder Works especially Karen West for all their hard work in organising this event. Our work looked amazing under the dapple sun filled wooded landscape. Same time next year!!!!!
A garden of england will be at our home garden The Polka Dot for the next month until it can be seen again growing in Sittingbourne High Street on Friday 13th and Saturday 14th August at the Re:Bourne Festival

Perry woods Sunday 20th June

The Polka Dot and its mutant life forms could be found at Perry Woods in Selling showing what could happen if we continued dropping our litter we where joined but the fairy folk, some went home with our viewers!!!!!

In 2 weeks we will be at Oare Gunpowder works with loads of 795 artists

Artists events in the woods

The Polka Dot and its Recycled Art foliage will be growing at both of these events. Come and bring your plastic bottles down to the woods and make flowers with me. I will be sitting amongst the natural vegetation making more blooms. See you there.

A Garden of England progress

You can now really see that the growths are taking hold of our garden over the weekend this beautiful aluminum appeared - take a look at these pics click here

Absolute Rubbish

The Polka Dot took its Absolute Rubbish (our own range of totally recycled and up-cycled products) down to Canterbury on Saturday and had a fantastic time. So thank you to all the lovely people we met and this very rare tiger!!!!!

We also launched our "Garden of England" project - we tried to find experts on Plastic mutant growths but No one came forward, so its now just growing and growing in our garden - why not come and see it for yourselves. Click here for more details