Emily Tough is MADE’s community engagement officer. She writes,
It’s been so lovely getting to know this New Beginnings group. They are well-established group of friends, meeting at MADE for several years. We’ve also welcomed some new New Beginnings this season!
For my first block of arts and crafts sessions, we have been making a model town of Haddington from found and recycled materials. Each week, we have been uncovering facts and some history about East Lothian’s county town. Being new to the area myself, this has been useful for me. It’s been so interesting hearing local people talk about their area.
Haddington stories
Did you know hallway carpets had to be found in time for the Queen to plant her rose in St. Mary’s Garden in 1973? There were some ghostly tales too, from underground passageways from The Victoria Inn. And a retelling of Haddington’s role in the failed English invasion in the mid-1300’s Burnt Candlemas.
For the first session, we wandered from MADE’s Arts Hub to sketch some buildings nearby. This was to familiarise ourselves with the architecture of the place, and to make some first-hand drawings of the buildings we would reproduce. We always see more detail taking our own sketches than copying from a photograph.
We’ve been using papier-mâché and sticking windows on to the boxes to turn them into recognisable buildings around Haddington. We’ve designed back drops of sunsets and seascapes to create the environment in which Haddington nestles.
With a few of Haddington’s recognisable buildings and establishments made, we still have a few weeks to go before exhibiting our model version of Haddington in miniature in the window display.
Thanks to …
Local cafes have been collecting old juice cartons and biscuit boxes for us whilst we’ve been working on this. Thank you to Falko and Caffe Luca for the majority of our found cardboard.
