Welcome to the World of
Beach Creatures
Our Pledge
to keep making Beach Creatures as long as there is rubbish in the sea.
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Our Goal
to discover new Beach Creatures from every corner of the world and get everyone to help cleaning the World's beaches!
Beach Creatures is an initiative of free art workshops for schoolchildren of all ages to raise awareness of environmental damage caused by discarded rubbish in and around the marine environment. Our work is run by volunteer artists.
Each Beach Creature is created using washed up rubbish collected from the local shoreline in conjunction with other recycled materials.
Supported by background information and facts, the children develop their understanding of the problems, discuss possible solutions and - at the same time - learn to deliver a message through a creative process.
Collecting Materials
This beach looks clean, right?
But looks deceive!
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When we go collecting rubbish along the beach, we cover a stretch of up to half a kilometre. It's our "patch". We monitor how much rubbish appears and what type. We look at the weather. We consider the season - and who visits the beach.
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Armed with grabbers, baskets and gloves, we set to work.
click for map
A lot of rubbish is quite hard to see - it almost has a similar colour to the pebbles or is tangled up in seaweed.
We also find items from far away - either from ships or even carried around the world by the currents.
Remember: A plastic bottle can last up to 600 years in the ocean!
The biggest problem however is size!
After a certain point, the power of the sea and beach pebbles break down plastic into smaller and smaller bits.
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These are called Microplastics and eventually these can no longer be collected - ever! You can see on the image on the left how small bits of plastic get compared to a 10 Pence coin...there is a lot more smaller that this in the environment that we can no longer see with bare eyes.
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Preparation
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Then everything can dry off before we have another sort according to size before we box the materials and store them away until they are used in our workshops.
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It is nice to imagine the undiscovered Beach Creatures that might lie undiscovered in our boxes until they are 'born' in a workshop!
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After returning home from the beach, we first rinse the seawater and sand off and untangle the rubbish.
Then everything gets a thorough clean indoors and we start a first round of sorting the rubbish into properties: plastics, fabrics, wood, glass or metals. Whatever we cannot use get's into our recycling bin.
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Look
at how much rubbish we have to recycle!!! This image shows that a large amount of what we find is either from fishing boats or is made up of household rubbish that ended up on the beach.
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Only some materials are safe for use in our workshops.
WORKSHOPs
We hold free workshops in schools around Sussex
(Year 5+) over a double lesson.
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For younger years, we recommend a show-and-tell session with already built creatures making a visit!
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After an introduction to the problems of plastic waste and how we find our raw materials, we encourage the children to make a concept sketch, so we can understand what they wish to achieve.
There are no rules or time limits, only a little Health + Safety, and we're good to go.
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Approved paints, brushes and crayons are provided by the schools. We carry out all the glueing where required, under firm instruction from the artists!
Sometimes the creatures can be stubborn and take longer to emerge.
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We help with encouragement and handy tips and weave in some facts about the bits and bobs we found on the beach on the way.
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After each workshop we leave a week for any straggling Beach Creatures to be finalised before we come back and take photos for the web gallery.
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Then we pick them up to prepare them for the next
exhibition!
Beach Creatures can also attend outdoor events with their TENT !
Exhibitions
We love exhibiting Beach Creatures, so more people can get the messages that our artists are sending.
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We work with local community groups , cafés and shops to get some free display space and do all the advertising ourselves.
It is excellent promotion for the hosts as well as the schools, and we invite the local press along.
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