‘Sunny Tails’ the stargazer designed by our young people

Children and young people supported by CF Education have worked together to help create a beautiful design for our ‘stargazer leveret’ set to be displayed as part of the St Elizabeth Hospice ‘Hop to It! art trail.

We are proud sponsors of the trail, which will see members of the public enjoying discovering a trail of hand painted hares around Ipswich and beyond. Each sculpture is also auctioned off at the end of the campaign, with the project helping raise vital funds for the hospice and raise awareness of its services.

We’ve sponsored a large hare as part of our group, which will be part of the main trail in Ipswich, and a smaller ‘leveret’ on behalf of our education division, which will be on display on one of the satellite trails in Felixstowe, Beccles, Woodbridge and Lowestoft as part of the ‘Hopscotch’ learning and community programme.

To design our small hare, we asked some of the children who are supported by our education team, to come up with their own hare artwork, based on a brief of ‘sunny days, bright colours and bold shapes’. Eleven of the designs were then collated by mural artist Frankie Rose, who created a version encompassing their themes, motifs and colours, to adorn the leveret.

Frankie mapped out the design on to the hare, then some of the children were invited to come and help her paint as part of their education sessions.

The leveret is now almost complete and will be collected by the team at the hospice ready for varnishing before it is unveiled as part of the trail in June.
Head of CF Education, Louise Everitt explains: “This has been such a wonderful project for our young people to be part of. As a group, we do all we can to support and engage with local communities, so being part of the art trail is something we’re really proud of.

“We knew we also wanted to find a way to bring this project into our work with our young people, so that they can feel engaged with the initiative and feel that they’re playing a part in such a wonderful community programme.

“It was lovely to see the range of ideas and designs the children came up with. Frankie has done an incredible job of bringing together their themes and ideas, so that the young people can see their influence and input.”

The Hop to it! Suffolk art trail goes live in Ipswich and beyond on the 21^st June.