Mobile Badge Workshop
Children resident in Stratford Village have participated in all of the Small World projects alongside adults, but the Mobile Badge Workshop was designed specifically as a project for children. At the completion of the reGeneration front gardens project, the artist Alison Marchant recycled the former plant delivery trolley into a simple Mobile Badge Resource Unit. This she then maneuvered up and down the Stratford Village streets situating the Mobile Badge Resource Unit on the pavements outside parents’ front doors inducting children into the mechanics of badge making as a portable gallery of their art. The imagery on the children’s’ badges reflects their visual representations from the planting workshops and the benefits to people and insect live. One of the children drew images of her and her mother planting wild flower seeds, another invented magical creatures that brought the plants to life. A glittery slug emerged with a diamante beetle. Another child drew ‘pretty girls’ beside tiny drawn and transfer flowers, a little boy drew a minimalist layout of tomatoes. Bumble bees emerged again and again in a small campaign to fight their extinction.