A small yet extremely busy park in central London, Waterloo Green is managed on behalf of the community by Bankside Open Spaces Trust. When local parents were consulted, they asked for more activities for children. Bethnal Green based metalworkers, One Little Girl and a Can of Gasoline, were commissioned to create two pieces of bespoke artwork which centred around the site’s marshland history. The sculptures are a larger-than-life migrant hawker dragonfly and a fen raft spider. The dragonfly is 5m long and just over 1m high and children are able to climb onto its back, tail and wings. The fen raft spider is 3m long. The migrant hawker dragonfly is a common sight on other sites containing ponds. The fen raft spider, however, is now at risk in the UK; hundreds of years ago, when this area was marshland, these would have been a common sight.
For more information about insects, visit: www.buglife.org.uk.
Community workshops were undertaken at Can of Gas’s studio. Land Inspire also worked closely with Bug Life UK and RoSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) both during the design stage and when installing on-site.
