A major visual arts project involving thousands of Canterbury schoolchildren will take place during this year’s Christchurch Arts Festival.
In the first announcement of the 2013 programme, the Festival reports contemporary New Zealand artist Tiffany Singh and her project, Fly Me Up To Where You Are, will be bringing colour back to Christchurch.The Festival is utilising The Art Foundation’s new crowd funding website, Boosted, to raise funds to bring the project to the city and hopes to raise $7000 over the next month.
Fly Me Up To Where You Are will see Singh visit Canterbury schools in August and September this year for children to develop the flags, which form the centre of the exhibition. Each child will create two flags expressing their hopes and dreams for themselves and for the city of Christchurch.
The flags will be stitched into strings similar to Tibetan prayer flags and will form a mass installation of colour and hope in the central city.
Fly Me Up To Where You Are is currently part of Auckland Arts Festival and has been described by Auckland audiences as “a truly breathtaking sight” as children’s hopes and dreams blow in the wind above the city’s central Aotea Square.
The project will be free for all participants and Singh believes it will be especially meaningful for Christchurch after everything the city has been through these past two years.
The Festival hopes to have more than 2000 children involved in creating their own flags.
Christchurch Arts Festival director Philip Tremewan says he hopes the people of Christchurch will gain huge satisfaction from the exhibition and “reading about the students’ hopes and dreams for the future”.
It is expected that more than 70,000 people will see the installation during the Festival in August and September this year.
Through Boosted, the Festival aims to raise $7000 between now and Sunday 21 April in order to get the project to Christchurch, and are appealing to the public to donate what they can afford to help them reach their goal.
To donate to the Christchurch Arts Festival ‘Fly Me Up To Where You Are’ project, visit www.boosted.org.nz
From the Christchurch Arts Festival media release
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