TOWN HALL ART

YOUNG PEOPLE'S AMAZING ARTWORK AT THE TOWN HALL

Pictures by Glyn Watkins

Eight fantastic paintings by children from the local schools - St Marys, Top School, Holy Trinity and Penhurst were unveiled by Hilary Biles on Friday. They are quite brilliant - colourful, vibrant and imaginative and will be cheering up the panels around the Town Hall for the next few months. In a short speech Hilary reminded us that it was two years ago that the Town Council first approached her as WODC Cabinet Member for Tourism - begging for help to start refurbishing the crumbling Town Hall. She managed to find 100,000 for us to kick the fund raising off and the show is now firmly on the road. She was absolutely delighted that the Project manager Councillor Greenwell has been keen to involve young people in the Town Hall project from the very beginning. "We all hope that this building is going to play as big a part in their lives as it has done for many generations before them!" So what a great idea when the big ugly hoardings went up around the iconic Town hall steps (which are being restored) to ask local kids to brighten things up a bit. They have done this brilliantly. Your webmaster had a long chat with one of the carers from Penhurst who described the sheer pleasure the kids had in working on their stunning contribution. Part of the process involved launching paint-soaked balls on to the panel and ensuring that the colour trail fitted the composition. She told me that more paint ended up on the floor and the kids themselves than on the panel. Apparently the Prime Minister had been in town shopping earlier on before the veils had been formally lifted but Councillor Greenwell organised a sneak preview for him. He was mightily impressed. "I will come back later and have a proper look " he said. "I don't want to steal Hilary's thunder!" Come off it Prime Minister, not even you could do that.

The Town Nursery Display Board at the Town Hall

Left to right Ruth, Verity, Anne, Catherine, Amelie, Ben, Verity, Simon, Tom, Joe and Andi

Ruth Hulme of The Town Nursery writes:

All the staff at The Town Nursery are very pleased and proud of all the hard work the children of Nursery 2 have put in to producing a wonderful display for the Town Hall Boarding

The children have done drawings of the buildings in Chipping Norton that we have been looking at over the last 12 months including the Water Tower, St Marys Church, Bliss Mill, the Town Hall and the Nursery. We had fun painting the board mixing up acrylic paint and sponging the fields and town centre. Ben very carefully painted all the trees and hedge rows using brushes and sponges. The drawings were all done by the children and enlarged on the photocopier. You have to get up close to see the detail on some of the people in the town centre, ladys with pushchairs, people with dogs and shopping trolleys along with the Co Op delivery lorry and the bakery, clothes and sweet shops drawn by Amelie. Verity has drawn herself and her family outside the shop buying milk. We had a lot of fun talking about and deciding what else we could put on there, families of cows on the common and the flower man with his stall. It was a wonderful project for the summer holidays and we would like to thank Keith Greenwell for organising the board and Glynn Watkins for dropping off and picking up the board for us. I would also like to thank the parents of Amelie, Ben and Verity and my colleagues Anne and Verity who gave up some of their Sunday morning to meet up to take lots of lovely photographs of the children and the board.