Operation Goodnight

This is an article I found in the 'Telegraph Magazine' July 2008. It describes the curfew that was placed on the teenagers of the town of Redruth at the beginning of the summer holidays. Apparently Redruth had one of the largest teen crime rates of the UK, and 'Operation Goodnight' was set up in order to combat this. Children of 10 and under were to be home at 8pm and children of 16 and under were to be home by 9pm. If the curfew was a success - which according to the article it was, then the initiative was to be rolled out in other places such as Manchester and the larger inner cities.

Redruth town is located within the old mining district of cornwall, and falls within an area which has been subject to much regeneration. It is about 3/4 miles from Cambourne another area earmarked for regeneration that is part of the "Heartlands" Scheme a project that was awarded big lottery funding of £22m.

" Voluntary" is the difficult word. There was no residents assembly, no vote on the matter. Instead there was a unanimous agreement by the dozen or so people who attended one meeting that the curfew would be a good idea. The scheme was conceived and being monitored by "the partners". Griffin (police officer) is untroubled by these niceties. "I thought lets just try it," he says. "It's not been imposed. We wanted a chance for the community to be part of something this summer: a low-key locally delivered initiative."

Bearing in mind the statistics would have taken into account things like population and also location, it cannot be fair to suggest that Redruth has the highest crime rate in the UK, only highest in crime rate when taking into account certain geographical considerations, that said the crime rate was sufficient that the town was used as a 'controlled test' to work out whether or not the curfew would work.

There are similar articles on the Telegraph website which talk about the curfew.

Heartlands Bench CEC

For my CEC work placement with Kerrier council, I was asked to design a bench which potentially would end up inside the Heartlands Development alongside other artist commissions. I knew about the ‘call for submissions’ to artists back in December, but the projects were too big for me to consider applying for and as well as this I had a great interest in both sides of the commissioning process, from the artists perspective and also the commissioners.

The call for submissions sent out by KDC, contained about 7-8 commissions, all of which were to be placed within the new Heartlands Regeneration Project. The massive heritage of the heartlands site (being on of the most prominent tin mining areas of the region) meant that there was a huge amount of source material and history to draw from which could be fed back into the project.

Image taken from: Seams & Veins Artist-Maker Brief for Pool Village Commissions Dec 2008

Even before I had come to Falmouth, I had decided that one of the main focuses of the course for me would be to look into the mining history of the area, with a view to incorporating this subject into my research and finding ways that this could inspire work for me.

The title of my course is ‘Interior and Landscape Design’, and it is important to explore understand what this means to me. So far, the subjects which have interested me are things connected to public art, urban space, architecture, community, history… then things like anthropology, because that is a broad enough title to contain most other subject areas, and importantly the design process.

With this in mind, the Heartlands Project was a great way for me to experience a live ‘regeneration’ project that is focussed on the public realm, instead of a much more singular or individualistic approach, which is something I am more familiar with, this because my own experience is limited, and certainly does not extent to working on big projects as this.

So having known about the commissions since December I was really excited when after sending in my CV in the hope of getting some work experience KDC asked me to design a bench.

The council office’s role is concerned with the landscaping and upkeep of the Kerrier district area. Whilst at the offices, my role was to design a bench and also get involved in planning of public consultations, this meant putting together inspiration sheets which would have been used to stimulate discussion amongst local people about the kind of improvements or initatives that they would like to see put in place in the community. Alongside this I did a bit of illustrator work, this time information sheets for the local Dolcoath mine. At the time I was not familiar with AutoCAD, and because of this I could only put my designs onto paper.




Making the jump from drawing on paper and sketching my ideas down without really thinking about it, to drawing in a computer programme, was a bit of a challenge, and did feel like it wasn’t very worthwhile doing. But now I can at least open CAD without having a heart attack, and I would even say that I can successfully draw some lines.


The inspiration for the bench is taken from railway tracks found on the Robinson's Shaft site. The bench will be made from shaped rolled steel, and groves will be etched into the bench to create the impression of tracks. Placed underneath the bench for support is a piece of granite stone. Although I can see problems with the design, I do like the general idea. It is simple and I think that the railway track idea would not be lost on people. I am yet to find out KDC's opinion though.

If people are going to understand ideas and take them seriously then using a programme like AutoCAD enables for the expression of these ideas in a more universal language, and not only this but takes things from the ideas stage into a design stage, where ‘specifying’ materials and sizes take it that little bit closed to reality.




What remains in the heartlands site is a mish mash of old industrial buildings – mineshafts, big wheels, engine houses, all of which are in a state of semi ruin, contrasting this there is a huge area of wild flowers and green land, which over time has laid claim to the site(s) – hence the reason many of these areas have been designated ‘areas of outstanding natural beauty’

In the industrial age this land would have been an eyesore and dangerously polluted, but now is quite beautiful in a run down industrial kind of way. In the heartlands site one of the things that remain, amongst other equipment is railway tracks, wagon would have been laden with ore and these been used to move ore from place to place around the site

VIEWFINDER National Monuments Record english-heritage.org.co.uk

One of the things that drew my interest to the railway tracks was to do with how they were used. Basically transporting ore from one location to another, on land and also beneath in the mines. Although we usually associate mining with men, in fact women were employed by the mines on the surface and worked at separating the ore that had been removed from within the mines, these women were known as ‘Bal Maidens’. Typically women were not allowed in the mines because of the dangers involved, but experienced no less hardship than the men.

“By 1800, there were 2,000 or more females employed in the Cornish mines, and at least 6,000
by 1851. Between 1720 and 1920, there were probably more than 80,000 females working in all
of the mine related industries in Devon and Cornwall”

Bal Maidens Cornwall and Devon

english-heritage.org.co.uk

Reading the statistics associated with the mining industry and more specifically the mortality rate, you begin to realise how dramatic and hard the miners existence would have been. There is a report that was written in 1842 by Dr Charles Barham who was a mine surgeon. In the report is a series of interviews that take place between himself and some of the Bal Maidens who worked at the mine. He describes their state of health and circumstances, each example makes for scary reading.

Jane Jewell, 21 years old (Truro, March 31st 1841)

She has worked a fortnight at Consols but found she could not continue. She
has always found the ‘bal’ (mine) disagreed with her which she attributed chiefly
to the mundic water. The smell made her sick when the water was warm. Her
father is a miner at Consols and is in a declining state, and is about 50 years of age.”

Children's Employment Commission Report of 1842 Interviews with Bal Maidens from Cornwall and Devon

The Industrial Railway Record No. 19 - p242-245 © June 1968

Although the land will have changed dramatically since the 1840’s the diagram above explains how the railways will have been used to move the ore from one location to another within the mine.

CEC Work Placement - Kerrier District Council, Heartlands Project

My CEC work placement that took place with Kerrier District Council at Camborne was really good. The experience for me worked on many levels and I felt that I learned a huge amount. This was not only actual learning but also to do with experiencing the environment.

The office was a mix of people, engineers to project manager, a department manager and of course landscape architects. The whole group worked in unison and there was an interdependency that existed between them, as much as they hated to admit this. Because the council is in flux, lots of the offices have been moved around, and new alliances have been formed amongst colleagues. So the current situation (of about a year) works to the benefit of all, now stepping just a few yards across the office instead of communicating through endless reams of emails.

On my arrival I was met by Cathy Lowe, Landscape Architect. Cathy quickly took me off to the Heartlands Site, where she gave me a guided tour of the surroundings, explaining the way that the land would have looked when the mines were all working.

The Heartlands site is basically centrally located to all of the mines within Camborne. If you do a mine search of the area on the WHS, you will discover that there are as many as 2000 mine shafts within a five mile radius, many of which were left abandoned and forgotten about only to be later discovered by builders, and terrified walkers.

The picture below shows the vast amount of mines shafts located within Cornwall, all of the yellow dots are mine shafts.

http://mapping.cornwall.gov.uk/website/whs/viewer.htm

The Robinsons shaft area is home to one of the largest mines in Cornwall with a depth of the shafts being an astounding 735 fathoms or 3000m or 2 ½ miles deep (fathom = 5’9’ feet, traditionally a fathom is used as a sea measurement, but here adopted by the miners as the standard length measurement).

Next to the Robinsons Shaft site there is another mine which sits just about a quarter of a mile away, this mine is called South Crofty, this is the only working mine that exists in Cornwall today. All of the seams of tin have been mined over the hundreds of years that Cornwall played host to the largest mining industry in the world, the only reason that South Crofty remains is that the price of tin has risen in recent years, which makes the job of mining the remaining tin a profitable task.

When I went round Camborne with Cathy she drove up to South Crofty Mine and told me to look at the perimeter wall – to better explain, beneath is a quote taken from a blog; ‘The Unbearable Oddness of Stevyn Colgan’ ( accessed on the 24th June 2009) it is a bit of a cheat but this perfectly describes what I saw.

"The closure (of South Crofty) was marked by some poignant graffiti. There is a story that the local police caught the daubers just as they were adding the final question mark. The officers read the graffiti, sighed sadly, got back in their car and drove slowly away. And what was written? Two lines from the chorus of Cornish Lads, a modern folk song written by local lad Roger Bryant:

‘Cornish lads are fishermen and Cornish lads are miners too, But
when the fish and tine are gone, what are the Cornish boys to do?’

http://stevyncolgan.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html

Crofty has just re-opened for business and, as long as the price of tin remains high, has the potential for another 80 years of production. But such is the fragile nature of the industry that I'm not hopeful, sadly. There will always be cheaper labour elsewhere."

The writing was faint on the wall, just about decernable, but the memory no doubt still is strong. There is so much to take in and so many things to think about, the strong roots of the past clashing with needs of the present.

The Heartlands area spans Redruth Pool and Camborne. Big lottery funding of £22 million was won by ‘CPR Regeneration’, (a partnership of Kerrier District Council and South West Regional Development Agency) using this money CPR aim to change the face the area, by creating a series of multi functional spaces, a ‘new’ meeting area with lakes, sculptures and an outdoor theatre, to name some of the changes planned. Intentionally re-presenting the historical identity of Redruth Pool and Camborne back to the people in a way that brings inspiration for the future.

This image shows the area of Camborne, Redruth and Pool, alongside the proposed plans for the Heartlands project, the new designed area will join the three villages.

Winsford Salt Mine

This is a picture of the salt mines in Cheshire, you'd think with all this salt we would not need to get it shipped in from abroad. This mine is huge, the article says "Altogether the mines underground boulevards run to more than 138 miles and increase by 80 metres every week....Plotted on a rigid geometrical grid, they serve an underground area of more than 5 square miles"

This mine was once employed to provide salt which was dissolved into brine to preserve food, now the salt is used to fill the gritters for winter. There are no fossils in the mine because the sea which would have been there the same time as the salt was too salty for anything to live in.

Now the carved out space is used to contain all sorts of valuables and not so valuable, from unnamed paintings stored in hidden alleys to doctors notes, to government policies, through to embarrassing relics of our consumerist history, lots of left over indestructible's living their half life's isolation.

There is a company called deepstore http://www.deepstore.com/ which promise to deal with all your storage needs boasting of a climate controlled atmosphere, cost effective storage solution and endless space. It's a bit like one of those government bunkers you hear about hidden beneath the Thames. The author of the article says '"Weird" doesn't cover it. No 5 shaft, down which I am lowered 108 meters into Winsford salt mine standing on the rim of a skip, is an unlikely simulacrum for the back of a wardrobe, but you'd get no bigger shock if you stepped into a Narnia. It's like a journey into the imagination, a place of adventure where any Greek mythologist, never mind a bond script writer, would reach for is pen. You might find the minator down here or Ernst Starvo Blofeld."

All of the above info was taken from The Sunday Times Magazine 25.01.2009, Article: Investigation, Salt Mines

CSM Test Mine Camborne

A few weeks ago I went on a trip down to the Test Mine at Cambourne, with the intention to explore my ideas and interest relating to mines. I took a camera with me to record what I saw. And it was great. Seeing first hand what actually goes on in a mine.

The mine is a ‘working’ mine in as much as students treat it as if it were an actual mine were they extract the various types of materials. The students practice their techniques of how to dig and explode rock.

I think there is a bit more that goes into it than that, but this was about as much as I understood. I was given a tour of the mine and showed the different tunnels and the seams of tin, and other examples metals that are natural in the rock. The ground was deep in water in places, you had to negotiate a path over the pools, and there were tunnels which had big barriers over them saying ‘no entry’ but I was assured that this only applied to a few of these tunnels and was directed towards the ones which I could go into ‘with caution’. I was given a light, which by means of a long cable and massive battery pack strapped to my waist I could attach to a metal clip on my helmet, and then I was told to come back when I finished. So I gingerly stepped off into the darkness armed with a rather dim light as a guide.

I took loads of photographs and came back with about 15 good ones. Because I was experimenting with long exposures it meant that I had to carry a heavy tripod with me, which was a bit annoying.

I’m guessing but in the olden days I imagine that the miners would light a stick of dynamite, throw it at the wall and then run as far as their legs could carry them, or they may have used sledgehammers, but that would have tired them out very quickly. Either way I’m sure that the job was a lot more demanding physically than it is now.

What happens today is the ‘miners’ decide which direction they want to take the digging in presumably they follow the money and go after the rock which contains the most stuff – in this case tin. And then start strategically exploding the rock face, they don’t throw the dynamite instead they drill straight into the rock face leaving long holes so they can then push the dynamite into the rock. I think the holes can be up to a few feet long, and the dynamite is pushed right to the back of the hole. Imagine the one hole and then times it by about two hundred. The holes act to weaken the rock face and then when the explosion takes place the holes which contain the dynamite, don’t have so much matter to move.

The miners still have to drill into the rock, which is done using a kind of drilling platform so that they don’t have to take the whole weight of the drill when it is working, It is still a long and time consuming process but much improved through the use of technology. Below is a picture of the lecturer Gus Williams, he is drilling, whilst the others who can’t be seen are shining their lamps towards the borehole.

When you walk around the mine apart from entering into a kind of suspended disbelief where you become shrouded in the atmosphere of the mines, the lowlight levels, the moisture in the air and the smell of wet rock, as well as the constant dripping and splashing of water, it is quite amazing to see the world from this angle.

With each step you take you can see where the rock has been blasted away, there are traces all over the walls, first of all I thought that the walls were covered in some kind of elaborate graffiti, but then it became apparent that the mines were covered, absolutely from top to bottom in these bore holes. Every place you look has these bore holes, including outside the mine, behind the tractor. It looks like a special rendering that never caught on.

Boreholes…

..with a broken drill bit in one

This was the store, with more holes.


When I was being shown around the mine by Geoff Addersly (Camborne School of Mines), he explained to me what various parts of the mine were for. There was a section which was being used by Exeter University for engine building, useful to them because of the noise levels created by the machinery. A company tried to use a a small part of the mine for the storing of nuclear waste, or more like burying. They dug out a hole which was experimentally filled with radioactive material, and then filled over with concrete, but discovered that this was not sufficient enough to eliminate the radio active effects, so abandoned the plan and went elsewhere.

This photograph shows the concrete filling over the rock face, which would have been part of the experiment.

There was also a wind tunnel that was under construction for another project, but was not currently in use. The ceiling is covered in a heavy-duty wire mesh, and then behind is the concrete slab.

On the rock face you can see traces of the oxidised tin – though judging by the collection of minerals at the university the colours could be specific to any number of elements.

Below you can just about see some white specs on the rock, which are a type of crystal formation.

As well as the sight seeing I was also able to see Geoff and Gus doing a laser scan of the mine.


This is a 2D picture like image of the mine on a computer screen, the laser enables for an accurate representation of the mines rock face, which is then used to calculate exactly how and where to drill the rock – to then set the explosion.

Around the mine there are lots of little illuminus blue plaques, which have been attached to the wall. The scanner is programmed to find these plaques and they are registered as location points, the scanner can then link up these locations and stitch the images together, so that instead of lots of images of the mine you can have one continuous image which shows the whole of the mine.

When you watch the laser it is almost like the lights you find in a disco which move across the floor, but each movement is a measurement, and the main point of the measuring in this scan was to find the rods, which have been inserted into the boreholes so that the exploding of the rock can be measured to a the nearest millimetre.

It was really good to go down the mine, and see how they work today. I did know what to expect because I had been told before hand, but when I imagine mine, what comes to mind is something underground, where the walls are held in place by bits of timber. Somehow I don’t think that that kind of set up would be allowed these days, health and safety would probably go wild.Hopefully I can encourperate some aspects of this experience into my work.

Robert Smithson and non-sites

Non-sites and my own thoughts...


This is a piece by Robert Smithson, a Land Artist who worked in the 1960’s – 70’s, his work was a mixture of gallery based projects and also land sculptures, which were collectively called ‘Earthworks’. This piece is called Spiral Hill, and it is very similar looking to the slag heaps found around 'The Eden Project' and St Austell.

Picture of 'Slag Heap's' near St Austell

Robert Smithson married Nancy Holt, also a land artist who famously produced ‘Sun Tunnels’ (1976) in Utah State, this piece recently featured on Channel 4’s “The Sculpture Diaries” (14th Sept 2008.) The tunnels are concrete tubes of a nine foot diameter and eighteen feet long. The tunnels have small holes drilled into them, which apparently align to star constellations and sunsets in the winter and summer solstices.

www.clui.org
see these photos in context, "Sun Tunnels'

Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt were highly acclaimed artists, they were the forerunners of the land art movement in America, with artists such as Robert Morris, Sol Lewitt and Donald Judd. These artists were generally known as minimalists and conceptual artists, often working with ideas to do with perception, society and philosophy stripping ideas back to the minimum and representing these in their sculptures. Their works reflect aspects of current opinion not dissimilar to today’s artists working with provocative social ideas. At the time of Spiral Jetty and Spiral Hill Robert Smithson was making links between industrialisation and land use, for example in an interview with Moria Roth, he describes his own understanding of Non-Sites.

“Non-Sites are the actualisation of the dialectic between the site and the non-site”

page 92 Robert Smithson

Non-sites can be interpreted as areas of land which have no use, due to the fact that they are a throw back of industry – through using land in an industrial way, for example in mining, the wreckage that is left does not lend itself to any kind of renewal. Huge amounts of money and labour would be needed to regenerate areas such as this. Non-sites can also be understood as areas either physical or mental which do not fall into any description bracket, somehow intangible.

Trying to find the links between my ideas and my history has always been quite confusing, but I just remembered a fact, stupidly because it has been staring me in the face for the last however many years. I was brought up in Warwickshire next to the Grand Union Canal, and my father lived in the nearby village of Long Itchington. En-route between my mum’s home and my father’s home was a village called Stockton, it’s only claim to fame – The Cement Works and Cally Pits. Both of these locations were quarries, The Cement Works, was originally called Nelson Cement Works, then later bought out by Rugby Cement. Cally Pits is in Stockton, and separate from Rugby Cement, but at some point the two could have been connected as they are about 1 mile apart.



Veiw of the lake at Cally Pits, the concrete structure in the middle is part of the old workings of the site - maybe a water tower. Below is a close up image.


These pictures are taken from a photographic website; http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/40380

View of ‘The Cement Works’ from the ‘Blue Lias’ at Stockton. The chimney in the background is part of the Cement Works and can be seen from miles around. The Cement Works are now being redeveloped into a recycling site which will provide energy to power the nearby Rugby Cement. When looking from the road you can see how big the quarries are, and dotted all around the area for miles are similar flooded quarries, obvilousley a relic from the past.
Having grown up with fields, and as a kid played in the area I am not surprised that the landscape has left some kind of imprint. Where I lived was quite remote so I instead of going and messing around in town I would end up in a field or on the canal with my sisters stepping in ditches - kind of annoying at the time because I did want to be in town, but looking back it was fun.

Eden and the Landscape

Project statement from Sue;

’You are leaving home. You don’t know if you will ever return. You are part of an exodus into an unknown future. Pack a small, portable box or suitcase.

Choose 7 things that you think will be essential, or precious to you. You may choose intimate things that tell your story, that remind you of who you are. You may choose things without which your life would be unbearable.

Think quickly: you don’t have much time. Pack lightly, you are a nomad now. We are leaving...’

Sue will talk about WildWorks and ‘The Beautiful Journey’ in the Foundation Building, then we would unpack people’s boxes/suitcases and hear the stories of their choices. In the afternoon there will be a workshop with this material – visualising in 2D or 3D the kind of worlds we seem to be imagining. This could happen at Eden or, weather permitting, in nearby landscape."

This was the brief, so on Tuesday of last week a group of eight MA students ventured off on a gigantic bus that took us to the Eden Project. I was looking forward to falling asleep and then waking up about five minutes from Eden as the bus came to a stop, but this was not meant to be and instead, we ended up talking about the American election, which was due to happen the next day so very significant, (would be polite to fall asleep at this point) and how we all hoped Obama would win …thankfully he did, and as a result America has a much brighter future to look forward to.

I was glad that I did not fall asleep because when we reached St Austell, I suddenly became aware of my surroundings, and began to see the kind of impact the mining industry has had on the local landscape.

China Clay Pits near St Austell, Cornwall
© English Heritage.NMR.Aerofilms Collection
Reference Number: Aerofilms/AC281617,
http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk

These visible traces may be immediately apparent when looking, but you can be sure that the evidence that you or I see is only minute representation of a much larger scale operation that has caused on one hand great wealth, by providing income for not only the miners but also the countries economy, with the money generated from tin/china clay mining and all the subsidiary trades that existed as a result of the mining. And then on the other added largely to the economic downturn of Cornwall as a whole.

“However it was in the 19th century that mining reached its zenith, before foreign competition depressed the price of copper and later tin, to a level that made Cornish ore unprofitable. At its height, the Cornish Tin Mining Industry had around 600 steam engines working to pump out the mines. Adventurers put up the capital, and the mine would hopefully return them a profit. During the 20th century various ores became briefly profitable, and mines were reopened, but today none remain. The collapse of the world tin cartel in 1986 being the last nail in the coffin of tin mining”

Extract taken from; ‘Cornish Mines and Mining History in Cornwall’, http://www.cornwall-calling.co.uk/mines.htm

One sight that immediately struck me was that of a mini mountain of earth that has got wild grass growing all over it, obviously a slagheap from the quarries. (photo) It looked just like the ‘mash potato mountain’ out of ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, the bit where he goes into a trance like state and starts to sculpt his vision out of mashed potato at the dinner table (has to be one of the best movie moments of all time).

http://movies.infinitecoolness.com/







Anyway I’m digressing, it does have that same kind of impact. You know it is anomalous within the landscape and that it shouldn’t really be there, but all the same it is so you have to accept it.

On arrival at Eden, we were met by Sue, and after some very quick introductions she sent us off to have a look around Eden, recommending that we walk around the outside of the grounds before entering the biomes.

The first thing you recognise is the bowl shape of the site, and immediately the connection to the quarry becomes apparent. Eden was once a quarry for China Clay, one of Cornwall’s natural resources, nearby St Austell being one of the main locations where the china clay is still mined.




The site is planted with dark autumnal plants that produce banks of colour up and down the slopes, dotted throughout is a mixture of art and educational material all of which add to the overall experience of Eden.

Stepping into the entrance corridor of the biomes is like walking into any other building with air conditioning but, when you look to the left you are presented with the rain forest and then to the right you have the dry cold of a winter of the mediterranean.


The sight of the hexagonal windows in the background brings back the fact that you are in a biome and not walking lazily through the rainforests of northern Peru. It is a great thing to do, you really have to pinch yourself - after you have stripped away the three in one anorak. The sights and sounds are like no other, once in the mediterranean biome you are taken back to that moment in time where you could smell the orange trees and rosemary, and you can see the aloe growing in the sand.


For the Wildworks project Sue asked us to bring in objects that we wanted to carry with us into the future. This left us with a relatively open brief, so we were free to choose what we wanted. People brought objects with sentimental value and also practical use. People then described what they had chosen and why it was important for the future.



People chose to interpret the brief how they wanted, some make which had multi functions, people were much more literal with their choices, including myself.

• Candle stick holder of my dads - self explanatory.
  
• Diary with spare pages - memories and future ones.
  
• Pencil to write with - self explanatory.
  
• Masi beads - to remind me of elsewhere, and (as pointed out to me) a possible trading object.
  
• Photo album - self explanatory.
• Heart shaped stone representing love.
  
• A clay sphere which I made some years ago to remind me to be resourceful.
  

Most of these objects are evocative of memories and people which I would not like to forget, I didn't feel that it would be important to place to much value on impersonal items because I thought that regardless of the situation the future would be new, and to my mind there would be lots of items left over, detritus or otherwise which would be useful.

After this point we listen to Sue talking about different aspects of society, mostly focussing on global warming and the chaos that this is creating. She asked us to get into groups and make our vision of this future, a world which may exist after a disaster.

We all had different ideas about what the world would be like, and each of us tried to portray these aspects within our own world vision (handmade box).


There are lots of elements to the design:

• The tent is made of the most hi-tec and durable material available. Acting as not only a place to sleep but big enough to hold a small community.
• The flame which comes from an oil well represents hope; and also it is a saleable commodity but with an added message of caution because of the trail of destruction that has been left in it's wake.
• A well to provide clean water.
• A city scape in the background and mountain range suggesting life elsewhere.
• Araura Baurialis, a magic like phenomena, my idea to suggest a kind of god.
• Flying taxi's, because I'm certain these will exist to all of us in the future.
  
• A dog, because they can survive most things.

I found this to be a really interesting day, filling me with thoughts about what the future holds, and again reiteration of the fact that we are responsible for what happens and the decisions which we make today, will impact on the future.