Petrified paintpots! Crystallised cheesecakes! What a super-wacko-sonic idea! At least that’s how young Jennings might have reacted to the way in which Shrewsbury’s Wakeman School is readying itself to leave our county town a fantastic artistic legacy.
Sadly, though, this is not 1954 and we are not all living inside one of Anthony Buckeridge’s joyously innocent schoolboy adventures where Jennings and his loyal best friend Darbishire get up to all sorts of jolly japes and enthuse about things in language unrecognisable to today’s 12-year-olds.
Crystallised cheesecakes indeed.
Nowadays, certain specimens of our youngsters are more likely to respond to the Wakeman’s fine idea with a grunt of disinterest as they continue to play on their all-consuming computer games – or even more likely would simply text their reaction in words which aren’t actually words at all because (like a second-hand box of Scrabble) they’re missing so many letters.
But the school just over the English Bridge deserves praise, and not just a grunt of praise or a text message of praise.
Because a massive new public art project, using some gorgeous work made by hundreds of current and former Wakeman School pupils will be the school’s parting gift to the town.
Prooving (if proof were needed) that whether we’re discussing the era of Jennings or today’s generation, we have always been blessed with plenty of gifted and creative youngsters.
The school is to close in August 2013 (its 75th anniversary year, as it happens) as part of wider changes to education provision across Shropshire.
This newly-announced arts project, an inspired and ambitious initiative, will see ceramic artwork (created by students over the past 30 years) installed in some of Shrewsbury’s most famous buildings, as well as on bricked-up windows around town.
Brainchild of Wakeman art director Mike Griffiths, it is hoped the first pieces of this artwork will be placed by early next year, each one framed in 4ft by 3ft frames.
It’s a cracking idea, and I can’t wait to see the artwork appearing around the town.
Almost inexplicably, I’ve always had a soft spot for the old Wakeman. It’s not as if I went there. When I was a boy, the Wakeman was an old-fashioned grammar school and I was considered not clever enough for such an institution. However, our big brother went there and I can still remember his bottle green blazer with that distinctive badge on the breast pocket – the letter W and the three leopards’ faces – or loggerheads as they are known.
When each of our three sons reached that age when they were considering which secondary school to attend, and all the schools in town held open evenings for prospective pupils and their parents, I made of point of visiting the Wakeman with our lads, mainly because I rather liked the look of the place myself. It’s a splendid building in a lovely location next to the river; its classrooms are large, its staircases wide. But it also seemed cosy to me, homely almost. Not like the sprawling shoeboxes they built in the fifties and sixties.
Anyway. My own tastes, as it happened, amounted to nothing, and our three chose another school instead.
Nevertheless, my own quiet admiration for the place has continued.
And this farewell gesture from the pupils is a great idea.
Mike Griffiths, who has been teaching at the school since 1982, said almost 4,000 pupils had made ceramic pieces over the years, with about 1,000 stored at the school. Rather than just throwing them away (surely unthinkable!) when the school closes next summer, this work will be displayed around the town for generations to come.
The project is called The Look Up Trail.
Each year since he joined the school, Mr Griffiths has sent out all Year 9 pupils into Shrewsbury (urging them to look up) to sketch the town’s buildings before then making ceramic tiles of windows, chimneys, doorways and doorknockers. Mr Griffiths said he had been captivated by the beauty of Shrewsbury and he wanted to pass on the ability to appreciate its character to his pupils.
He said the trail will cement links between the school, its pupils and the town.
“Whether they are 16 or 47, the beauty will be there and in years to come, some people will be walking around the town and come across the Wakeman Trail and say: ‘I did that one, that’s one of mine’,” he said. “That would be everything I want the trail to do.”
What a nice thought.
And Mr Griffiths added: “When it is all finished we will have a Wakeman Trail leaflet at museum centres or the library. It is called the Look Up project because that is what I have been encouraging the children to do. It is our gift to Shrewsbury. It is probably unique – I don’t think there will be anything like this anywhere else in the country.”
Well. Hearty congratulations to everyone involved in this project, pupils past and present, the two funding providers – the Wakeman Parents Association and the Local Joint Committee – and of course Mr Griffiths.
Like I said to begin with: Petrified Paintpots!
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