For information about the Young Environmentalist Group, access the link below
http://www.freewebs.com/youngenvironmentalactivists/
The YEA is a group of young people that are dedicated in helping to enhance the environment within their communities in which they live. The Young Environmental Activists (YEA), have recently completed a project at Preston Park Hall Museum called Beyond the Sword.
The Beyond the Sword project took place on a Saturday morning for several months at the museum, and involved around 12 young people from across the borough of Stockton-on-Tees ranging between the ages of 13 and 19 years old who are formally known as the YEA group.
This project was too look at the history of blacksmithing. The group started this project by meeting up regularly and creating poems about the career title of a blacksmith and what life was like for a blacksmith. Some of the group members also wrote poems about past wars and soldiers fighting whilst blacksmiths would be making the weapons in the forges. A book is in the process of being collated together with all of the poems in.
The group then met up with the blacksmith Adrian, who works at Preston Park to discuss the task ahead. The YEA had the task of refurbishing the armoury in Preston Hall Museum, and to do this they were going to produce a sculpture made in the forge to go along the wall of the armoury.
The entire YEA took part in the designing of the sculpture as they all sketched plans of what they thought the sculpture should contain or look like. Each member of the YEA came up with different designs, all of the designs were collated together, and a final design was produced.
When the final design was produced all the YEA members took part in actually building the sculpture in the forge. They all had a go and produced their own pieces of iron sculpture in the forge which when put together make the middle of the sculpture.
The poems what the members had produced earlier this year also got incorporated with in the sculpture. Due to this fact the sculpture is not just a sculpture as it tells a story within it. The sculpture is a big content of the refurbishment in the armoury in Preston Hall Museum.
To mark the refurbishment of the armoury Preston Hall Museum had an open day, where councillors and members of the public along with the YEA members were able to see the finished sculpture.
