For Birmingham Hippodrome’s ‘Summer in Southside’ event, we were asked to come down to their urban beach to create some of the city’s landmark buildings.
With the rest of the team busy sculpting in London, Zara headed up to meet me in Birmingham and with the help of the fantastic technicians at the theatre, we quickly managed to compact 10 tonnes of sand giving us a day and a half to carve in the sweltering sunshine!
With Zara carving a two and half metre long sculpture of the city’s impressive Council House, I added some of the other sculptures of the Bullring, the Rotunda and of course the Hippodrome.
The crew were busy decorating the space and assembling the tiki bar on the second day while we were finishing the carving in the shade just in time for their VIP party. We had lots of impressed passers by giving us some lovely comments and had the local news crew shooting in the sunshine. The space looked amazing as the guests arrived and myself and Zara quickly tidied up and left them to enjoy the evening.
I headed back to Yorkshire to get ready for a friends wedding and Claire kindly came up from London to help Zara to run a very busy workshop for families on the Saturday. The whole street had been shut down and taken over by dancers, performers and musicians which made for a fantastic weekend!
A big thanks to Zara, Tom and all the team at the Hippodrome that made light work of digging and compacting and for having us at such a great event!