​Children’s art bonds station with village community

Southern Railway is proud to display the first of many art exhibitions to be produced by local children for Durrington-on-Sea station. Hawthorns Primary School has joined Southern in the company’s latest community-building Station Partnership, celebrated with an event to view the children’s artwork this month.

So far the children have produced five art displays, all inspired by the owl that features in the school’s logo. Children at Little Owls Nursery, part of the school, contributed along with pupils in all Primary year groups.

The whole project was co-ordinated by fourtrainee teachers – Michell Atkins, Lisa McMillan, Ita Moss and Sam Ford – as part of their Primary Education degree studies at Chichester University. Their target was to help the school achieve the Gold Artsmark award, a prestigious recognition by the Arts Council, and at the same time help the school pursue its objective of community involvement.

Because the trainees will finish their studies this year, they have set the school itself up to run the project from now on. Michelle presented the pupils with a pack of materials for the next activities. She said: “The children have produced some amazing artwork in response to the art challenge we set them. Their displays at Durrington station will help forge an ongoing community partnership, showcasing the creativity of the local children and promoting a sense of pride amongst local people connected with the school.”

At the launch event the school was surprised and delighted to receive £500 from Southern. The rail operator provides this to help its new community partnerships get started. Hawthorns will use it to buy additional art materials for later displays, the next of which will be installed later this year.

Nina Mitchell, Key Stage 2 lead at Hawthorns, said: “Our children are thrilled to see their artwork on display and can’t wait to get started on our next project. We hold an ‘Arts Week’ at Hawthorns and plan to create our next display during this event. We were overwhelmed by the generous donation from Southern Rail which will help make this year's ‘Arts Week’ one to remember. We wish our Chichester students the best of luck in their future careers which I’m sure will be very successful.”

Howard Clear, representing Southern’s station management team for the West Sussex coast at the launch event, said: "We’re delighted to see the wonderful artwork the children have produced for our passengers to enjoy. The station is much more attractive and we look forward to their future displays. My thanks to everyone for all the effort they have put into making this happen. We now have 70 station partners across the network and it is always great to see people getting more involved in our stations and helping them to further reflect the communities they serve.

“This is great timing for us as we've just committed funds to set up a Community Rail Partnership line along the coast between Hove and Angmering, and we’ll be looking to encourage more partnerships like this with more of the dozen stations on the line as part of that wider community."