Staff and students at the University of Southampton’s Winchester School of Art (WSA), together with other young people and local residents, have made a giant bee from used plastic water bottles and other recycled material to raise awareness of environmental issues.
The bee takes pride-of-place above the main entrance to Winchester Cathedral and forms part of its Green Hampshire Harvest Weekend event (5/6 October).
The stunning artwork was created by Lisa Burn-Hunter, Senior Teaching Fellow in Knitwear for Fashion at WSA, with the help of other members of staff, students, people in the local Winnall Community Centre and young adults taking part in the National Citizen Service who attended art workshops at the School over the summer.
The bee is covered in dozens of mutli-coloured flowers made from recycled plastic and contains over 50 balls of wool. All the fabric came from donations, or was sourced from scraps of yarn via the charity, Southampton Scrapstore. Runners in the Yateley 10k race provided many of the plastic bottles.
Lisa says: “It was a mammoth effort to get the bee ready for Harvest Festival weekend – from flower-making by local children on campus, to pom pom workshops at a nearby community centre – not forgetting the fantastic response we had to our appeal for used plastic bottles.
“The result is an eye-catching piece of artwork which serves as a fun way to highlight the serious, timely issue of the harm plastic can do to our environment – getting people to think about how they can reduce and recycle their own waste.”
Green Hampshire Harvest Weekend is organised by Winchester Cathedral and celebrates Harvest and farming while also exploring the impact of climate change and how it is affecting us on a daily basis. It is the culmination of events in the city for Winchester Green Week (29 September – 6 October) which aims to celebrate and promote action for sustainable living in the Winchester area.
