It’s been a strange year for everyone, with pubs, restaurants, shops and other businesses not able to operate as usual, everybody having to stay home for lockdown and unable to see our nearest and dearest, not to mention the monumental work our key workers, especially those working for the NHS, have been doing to keep everyone safe from Covid 19 and keep the country going.
For Sand In Your Eye our new normal since the Corona Virus pandemic has been working at home, rather than our usual sand art on the beach. We’ve been busy putting together safe Covid 19 strategies and policies to ensure the safety of everyone who takes part in our outdoor events and artworks, honing our sculpting skills and practising some new techniques such as sand table animation.
Here is a film that we made at the beginning of lockdown.
As things begin to ease and hopefully return to something like normal we need to ensure that all our hard work keeping Corona Virus at bay is kept up and that everybody stays safe and keeps fighting the virus by following the guidelines. With this in mind our team packed up their sand drawing tools and made their way in separate vehicles to Whitby.
There, adhering to social distancing guidelines and following all hygiene requirements, they created this fantastic giant sand drawing to illustrate and remind people that whilst we can now get out and about we still need to keep 2 metres from people who are not in our household.
This beautiful beach art image is a portrait of Paula, an ICU nurse at The Royal Oldham hospital, who has been working tirelessly and fighting on the front line of the pandemic with the rest of our NHS heroes.
Paula is actually the twin sister of our very own Claire and we are very proud of her and thankful for all her sacrifices. The sand drawing portrait is made up of lines, which are 2 metres apart, contained within a corona virus cell.
The 55 x 80m sand drawing is a stark reminder that the virus is still with us and that we must try and adhere to hygiene and social distancing measures to keep ourselves and others safe.
Now that lockdown is beginning to ease, hospitality and tourism will have an opportunity to regenerate and outdoor events and festivals can begin to take place safely and hopefully we can all start to get our lives back on track. Yorkshire is blessed with so many beautiful tourist destinations such as Whitby and we need visitors to help maintain our local economies. However, as the drawing clearly states, we need to do this responsibly.
It was wonderful to get the team back together (or at least back on a beach with a safe distance between us all!) after such a long time apart. Jamie and Claire were joined by Rich, Mark and James and Jamie even got to see his Dad, who lives in Whitby and popped down to the beach to help out! We hope you manage to get to see your friends and family and enjoy the rest of summer, but please keep safe and as the sand drawing says, protect each other.
Claire & Paula 
