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February 2008

UK: Halcrow office gets art attack from students!

Halcrow hosted a presentation evening last night to celebrate the work of ‘A’ Level art and design students at Whitchurch High School, Cardiff.  In 2007, Halcrow partnered with the school's Art and Design department to provide a real-life focus for their 'A' level student’s coursework.

The students were asked to research Halcrow’s work, culture and future aspirations to create bespoke pieces of art which gave them credits towards their 'A' level and Key Skills qualifications as well as entering a Halcrow sponsored competition.

The entries were displayed in Halcrow’s office at One Kingsway in Cardiff. Halcrow’s staff judged the competition which provided enthusiastic debate between colleagues.  The four winning entries will be displayed in the office reception.  Three 'Directors choices' were also chosen due to the very high standard of entry and will be hung in other locations within the building.

Halcrow has been honoured to work with such a high performing department and their talented students.  GCSE results in 2007 showed that out of 3,274 entries, six pupils from Whitchurch High School were in the top ten in the UK for applied art. The A-level Art and Design results were also of an exceptionally high standard, with six pupils achieving the highest overall marks. This gave Whitchurch 12 of the top 20 students in the UK for these two courses.

Welsh Assembly Member for Cardiff North, Jonathan Morgan presented certificates to all the students. He said:

“It is fantastic that we are able to celebrate the partnership between Whitchurch High School and Halcrow. The students have worked incredibly hard and the efforts of those at Halcrow demonstrate how business and our schools can work closely together.”

Halcrow regional director, Barrie Jones was there to congratulate the students. He said:

“Working with the students has been rewarding and the artwork they produced was highly pleasing. The commitment and time they put into studying our business really shows. They managed to capture the essence of our core messages. The standard of entries we received was very high making judging an enjoyable event shared by many or our colleagues. We look forward to working with more students in future years”.   

Several pieces of art from the competition will also be displayed in the foyer of the National Museum for Wales on 11th April 2008, where the annual dinner of the welsh branch of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) will take place. Their theme for this year is ‘Art in the Environment’.

The students comments on their pieces of work:

Nathan Flynn:

To celebrate Halcrow’s 40th anniversary since opening offices in Wales I have designed a piece of art that reflects past projects and Wales as a country. I wanted the piece to reflect the culture and diverse heritage of Wales by demonstrating the projects Halcrow has been involved in mixed with Welsh landmarks. The piece is made by sculpting iconic images of the landscape on to Welsh slate. The piece includes The Pier head building, Millennium Stadium, The Norman Keep at Cardiff Castle and The Millennium Centre all of which are all emblems of Wales. I also wanted to include in the piece images of projects Halcrow have been involved in such as the A470 Blaenau Ffestiniog to Betws-y-Coed Improvement Scheme, The Sennedd (Welsh Assembly Government Building), The Second Severn Crossing and The Llanwern Regeneration Project. I took inspiration from Halcrow's Connecting Wales project when designing a layout for the individual slate sculptures. I linked all of the sate pieces with steel to connect the different areas of Wales as a whole. I also took inspiration from the formation of the cables of the Second Severn Crossing when constructing the piece.

Freya Mclellan

In order to start the Halcrow project I carried out some research on the company. I was particularly interested in Halcrow’s global presence and the Halcrow Foundation. I wanted to represent this work being done in my final piece. The reason I chose this idea was because I found the Halcrow Foundation the most interesting and also I liked it because it shows that the Halcrow Company cares and gives time to help the less fortunate countries in the world. For my piece I decided to use mixed media and textiles to create a collaged semi-abstract style of work. I looked into artists such as Betty Green and Theekshana Kumara for inspiration. I felt that this style worked best with my ideas and to signify the importance of what the Halcrow Foundation is and what it achieves.  

Lauren Catris

I chose to represent Halcrow’s’ work in Wales as a focus for my final piece. I decided to depict a Welsh Landscape, but not to make it like any other landscape, by using the power of colour symbolism. I used black watercolour paint for the majority of the painting, in order for the red subjects to stand out dramatically, as they are the main symbols that portray the paintings message. I chose to use the colour red, to represent Halcrow’s ‘40th anniversary. As Red or ‘ruby’ is the widely known colour used to celebrate 40th wedding anniversaries. Red was also important as undoubtedly being significant to Wales, a recognisable, national colour.

The tree in the painting has several meanings behind it. Not only does a tree symbolise the growth of Halcrow and its respectable work for the World, and the future, it also has 70 leaves on it in total. 70 being the number of years Halcrow has been an established company, and lastly the 40 red leaves symbolising Halcrow’s 40th anniversary. The young boy being led by his father denotes the fact that children are our future and must be shown by example to make this world a better place. The child is pointing into the distance, or in a symbolic sense, the future, as the train passes by, representing the recent tender won by Halcrow and the railways in Wales.

Joshua Flynn

Halcrow leads the way in putting environmental ideas in to practice for the better of the planet. In my piece I wanted to show that Halcrow is conscious of the environment and considers any harmful effects that could be caused even in the initial planning stages. I have illustrated Halcrow’s paperwork merging with the environment, showing no negative effects and how Halcrow’s use of recycled paper, can help sustain our future resources and set example to others. In the piece I have symbolised that essential planning and accurate paperwork formals the necessary foundation for a successful project. I have demonstrated this by using paperwork to represent the dedicated hard work of all Halcrow’s employees, which forms the plans and the initial concept, which eventually becomes the finished product. My piece is representative of the Halcrow ‘H’ symbol and of the Second Severn Crossing – A Gateway which is moving Wales forward to a sustainable and better environment.

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