UK Hand Knitting Association

RECYCLED RAINFOREST

Recycled Rainforest was a collaborative pilot project between The UK Hand Knitting Association and The Crafts Council to launch 'Craft Club' and took place at Lindens Primary School in Sutton Coldfield. The Recycled Rainforest Project was showcased at the Design + Technology Show at the NEC 19-21 November 2009 and hailed a great success by all who saw it.

Lindsay Chalford-Brown, is the project manager for The Recycled Rainforest, here she sets out the aims and objects:

"The practical side of the project is entirely administered and managed by the children themselves, and they have appointed Project Leaders to oversee the whole project and Group Leaders to motivate and supervise the Design, Construction and Painting Groups. So far, we have created a collaged backdrop of a Rainforest environment - waterfalls and forest - (6 metres long x 2.45 metres high), which has been made of hundreds of donated hand knitted items cut and collaged onto a Hessian background and then painted to pick up all the textural interest. We have also created free-standing trees trunks out of donated, recycled industrial polystyrene, which will be covered in textural hand knitting produced by the children and their knitting support visitors in classroom workshops and at Craft Club.Using the same polystyrene core, the children have also made huge, knitting-covered 'rocks', which will sit under the backdrop waterfall and provide seating within the knitted 'river', which is also being produced from squares of knitting sewn together. We are also holding weekly knitting Craft Club in school every Friday afternoon and Wednesday lunchtime, where all sorts of recycled yarns get created and knitted!! Plastic bags, fabric strips, old tights, ribbon, packaging and wire are a few of the yarns we experiment with - and they will all be used in the 'Rainforest' to create texture and pattern."

Images November 2009
(all images Adrian Burrows)


Lindens School	Lindens School	Volunteers At Lindens School	Chris Kingdom, UK Hand Knitting Association Lindsay Chalford-Brown, Project Manager Katy Bevan, Crafts Council Simon Griffiths, Headmaster Of Lindens School

NEC Birmingham November 2009


Recycled Rainforest At NEC Birmingham	Students At The Show Are Taught To Finger Knit	Lots Of Interest On The Stand	One Of The Volunteers

Chris Kingdom, UK Hand Knitting Asociation:

"The Recycled Rainforest was the flagship project to launch the new national initiative to get craft skills back in schools as part of the curriculum or as an after school club.
Recycled Rainforest was a themed topic to introduce children to Life Cycles which was part of the curriculum. They were able to incorporate art and craft skills and particularly knitting in their creative use of recycled materials. The school also formed a weekly Craft Club so that the children could develop their yarn craft skills with the help of local volunteers ( mostly WI ladies). The school are hoping to continue this club well into the future now that the Knitted Recycled Rainforest topic and 3D installation have been completed.

Craft Club is a national initiative co-sponsored by the Crafts Council and the UK Hand Knitting Association and supported by the WI. The project demonstrates how a school can successfully welcome members of the local community to come in and share their skills with the children. Although this project was carried out in a Primary School, it is perfectly adaptable to all ages and by using 9yr olds as an example, we were able to demonstrate how easily and quickly the skills could be learnt across all ability levels, including those with learning difficulties, and, along with the newly acquired skills, the numerous benefits including improved self esteem and confidence that resulted.

The Knit1-Pass It On campaign is to encourage everyone with knitting skills to pass them on. Ideally this can be done through involvement with a school Craft Club but on a modest level, simply passing on yarn skills to at least one other person is a good starting point."

Click here to visit the new Craft Club website to register your interest whether as a school or if you would like to become a volunteer.

The start of the 2009 Autumn Term at Lindens School has been more hectic than usual for those involved in this project and to keep you up to date with progress, we will be bringing you photos of all stages of the completed project.

Learning To Knit