In collaboration with Moulsecoomb Primary School, the Moulsecoomb Environmental Arts Club and Morgan Claverie, our gallery window was filled with winter inspired decorations.

The Moulsecoomb Environmental Arts Club is an established class that focuses on general environmental education for children and considers learning about ecosystems as central. They also believe in the necessity for a creative outlet and response to the complicated and complex systems that they explore. From planting and growing their own vegetables to making dead leaves garlands, it is a space for discovery and appreciation.

Over the course of a month, this class of students of all ages, ranging from 5 to 11 years old, designed and created different elements for what came together as a thought-provoking and beautiful window display for the ONCA Gallery.

Using waste materials, general rubbish and plastics, the class created a Climate Change themed installation, which brought to mind many familiar images like melting polar ice caps or plastic filled birds.

Through their use of waste materials they also addressed issues of recycling and our relationship to waste.

The intent of the display was to show you can “give a second life” to objects you had previously labelled as ‘rubbish’. In a permaculture approach to our everyday lives, it is about surveying what we usually qualify as trash, and establishing how we could repurpose it.

The challenge for the children was making something new out of resources that already had a set role and use in our society. The challenge for adults is getting past our over-consumption, and making do with what we have already, even if it is initially perceived as waste. Effectively the display hoped to make people reflect and work towards changing their everyday habits and how they relate to what they buy and throw away.

From Friday 12th December to 9th January many admired and reflected upon this window display at the ONCA Gallery. Thanks for everyone’s comments and good wishes.