On the 25th of November, Cody Dock hosted a fantastic opening exhibition event, The Story of Water. Seven schools from London partnered with sister schools in Accra, Ghana to promote learning equality as well as the impacts of human activities on our environment, specifically waterways. These schools created a range of different art work from, spoken word and poetry to sculpture pieces and up-cycled plastic sea creatures. With the help of Cody Dock, the artwork has been displayed:
Four schools from London St, Joachims, Southern Road, Maryland and Elmhurst came down to Cody Dock to view their artwork and artwork from the connecting schools. When the students first arrived they were extremely excited to see all the work produced by different schools and how it would be displayed. They were all excited to see the RIver Lea, as this put into perspective what they have been learning about and how their work may make a change.
To start off this event Andrew Mutter, one of the lead artists on this project opened the exhibition by cutting the ribbon on the gangway gallery with two students. Each school had an opportunity to perform. Their sister schools in Accra, Ghana were supporting and watching via zoom. Elmhurst started off with an energetic African drumming performance. This was followed by poetry raps from a few children expressing their concerns for sustainability. The next school to perform was southern road, with three different performances. They opened their section with a powerful protest speech about protecting our oceans as well as sealife. Then followed by a rap trio and individual poems about plastic pollution in our oceans. Maryland performed a powerful group climate change speech that expressed how they felt about the changing world from children’s perspective. St joachims closed off the performance section of the event by singing heal the world.
After the wide range and entertaining performances, there were speeches from the project leader Rubina Rehman, Environmental manager at Cody Dock Ben Bishop and CEO of Cody Dock Simon Myers.
There were guests from different organisations that fund Cody Dock, and have an interest in the environmental and community work Cody Dock provides. Representative from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs and Heritage Lottery Fund.
This work could not be possible without the funding from the British Council and Thames Festival Trust and project leader Rubina Rehman.
The students work is still available at Cody Dock’s Story of Water Digital Exhibition:
