The Westport branch of the Chernobyl Children’s Project is getting ready for a bumper May bank holiday weekend of art and creativity.
Already the group has delivered over 1,200 bricks to the town’s primary schools. The children are getting ready to paint, colour, collage, pastel, design and sticker the special cardboard “Bricks 4 Hope” to help raise €50,000 to build the Chernobyl Project’s Home of Hope in Belarus.
And if that’s not enough, the Chernobyl group is busy organising an art auction which will take place on Friday May 1 at the Clew Bay Hotel starting at 7.30pm. Already a host of well known artists including John Brady, Breda Burns, Helga Kaffe, Jimmy Lawlor, Liam Lyons, Alice Maher, Derek McGowan, Brigitte Grothe Neumann, Seosaimh O Dalaigh, Ger Sweeney, Dermot Seymour, and many others have committed their art to the Home of Hope campaign.
“We are absolutely thrilled with the reaction from the children to the bricks and to the generosity and support from so many well known artists,” said Westport Chernobyl chair Geraldine Butler. “We really hope that the art auction can be a showcase for the wonderful work of the town’s artists and a successful fundraising opportunity for Chernobyl.”
And you don’t have to be a primary school child or an artist to join in this May bank holiday art extravaganza. On Saturday May 2 the Chernobyl group will be holding a special art workshop at the Westport Leisure Centre so that more adults and children can paint and design their own Bricks 4 Hope.
All the hand crafted bricks will be built into a cardboard house in a town centre location. Town architect Simon Wall has been roped in to design what is guaranteed to be Westport’s most colourful structure.
The Chernobyl Children’s Project Home of Hope initiative gives children who have been abandoned in Belarus the chance to have a near normal family life. As well as providing the actual physical house, the project recruits and supports a loving foster couple who care for the children as if they were their own.
