Primary schools in the Inverclyde area will be travelling to the McLean Museum and Art Gallery in Greenock next week to take part in a celebration of rubbish and recycling.
It is all part of Inverclyde’s Cleaner, Greener, Safer campaign to make people more environmentally aware.
On a practical level, the council is introducing a recycling scheme throughout the area, with householders being asked to separate rubbish into different bins. Other council departments have also been asked to play a significant part in the initiative.
Catriona Henderson, the development officer for Inverclyde Arts, says:
“FlashTrash is the title of a project we have been running to highlight how the arts have a part to play in making Inverclyde a cleaner, greener, safer place.
“Ten primary schools have taken part in a project run by Glasgow paper-maker Alison Newman. The kids had a fantastic time producing beautiful paper from old cotton shirts, jeans and so on and making the paper into notebooks and envelopes.
“We always go on about kids not realising that milk doesn’t come ready-made in a bottle. Now they’ve discovered paper doesn’t magically appear in jotters.”
Work from the paper-making project will be on display at the McLean Museum and Art Gallery from tomorrow for a week (March 11-18), along with objects made from recycled materials. These include colourful handbags made from bin bags and musical instruments made from cans. Photographs by Inverclyde children show that rubbish, when arranged, can look artistic.
Visitors will also face a huge butterfly with a 30ft wing span, made entirely of discarded drinks cans. It was created by young people in the area working on a Duke of Edinburgh Awards project.
A week of FlashTrash workshops at the gallery will have primary pupils making puppets out of old socks, listening to stories with a recycling theme and watching a play by students at James Watt College, Greenock, called SOSS - Save our Solar System.
McLean Gallery, tel 01475 715624
