When we were asked to deliver over 30 sand drawings in different locations all over the UK and Ireland for Danny Boyle’s Pages of the Sea project with 14-18 NOW, the turn around was just 7 weeks. We have made huge sand art projects in the past including The Fallen 9000, Aardman’s Gulp, the worlds largest stop motion animation and Land Rover’s A Line In The Sand, so although this was a daunting task we knew we had the knowhow and core team to make it happen. 14-19 NOW teamed up with partners from different groups from the UK to volunteer to take part at the different locations. Sand drawing is quite a science, especially when attempting such a big project in the wetter months so we researched beaches that would be suitable. Once we had a list, 14-18 NOW selected from the list which beaches they would like to use. We then set about the huge task of working out all the logistics, timings and risk assessments for each location. At the same time as this Liz began designing each of the portraits and we also designed to stencil too. It didn’t stop there we then had an incredibily hardworking team at our studio making all the sand drawing equipment for each team and cutting the stencils. Over 800 in total were made, packaged and sent to each location. During this time we also met with the 30 location team leaders and ran a training day to teach them all how to create the drawing on the day. It was a mammoth project and to make things even more pressured we were also creating an ice bar the same week of Armistice Day, so had to jump from one project, to another, then back to finish the ice bar!
We are very happy and honoured to have been a part of such an important project and even more pleased at how well all the teams did on the day.
A big thank you to the Imperial War Museum and Danny Boyle for inviting us to be part of it.
