Mosaic Floorscape
Old Trafford Library & Community Centre, TEAPOT
- completed Spring 1998
- budget £12,000.00
- commissioned by Trafford MBC
- supported by Lead Artist, Adrian Moakes
Together with two assistants assigned to the project as part of Trafford’s mentoring programme, I hosted workshops with the after-school club at Powell Street, the children at Rixton Lodge Family Centre, the local cubs and beavers groups, the Northumberland Road Asian Women’s Group, Lowry Lodge Residential Home for the Elderly, staff from Old Trafford Library, St. Hilda’s Youth Club and Old Trafford Youth Club.
Mosaic Floorscape, Old Trafford Library & Community Centre
The Northumberland Road Asian Women’s Group designed and made the six cast bronze hands, decorated in mendhi patterns, joining over a silver web. Other ideas that came from the workshops included a mosaic hop scotch, a music corner, ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ from the senior citizens and coded messages from the cub scouts.
One of the groups was this Asian Girls’ Group, who wanted to work as a big team to produce a tree root design, initially intending it to be realised in black pebbles against a neutral background. I encouraged them to draw on cultural references, such as decorative embroidery, which influenced this fluid, spiralling root design, picked out in granite sets with jewel-like leaf mosaics along it.
Billy with his snail
Two ‘open’ workshops took place in the community centre on consecutive Saturdays. During these sessions, some participants like Billy, pictured here, created card and tissue paper collages that were later cast in bronze.
Billy and Jamie with the cast bronze snail
Others created designs for mosaic images, based on creatures living amongst the tree roots.
Tracey Cartledge Artist 