Cllr Julie Gunn, Cllr Phil Riley, Lauren Zawadzki Festival of Making Director, Councillor Quesir Mahmood, James Hayhurst Ark Plastics Director and poet Stuart Quinn.
Published Friday 21 October 2022 at 17:23
17 brand new benches are being installed across Blackburn with Darwen, engraved with lines of poetry inspired by the Covid lockdowns.
The benches form the borough’s memorial to the Covid pandemic, which has been developed following a public consultation earlier this year.
In the consultation, which was carried out online and through the Council’s annual Shuttle Extra magazine, residents told the Council that they would welcome somewhere to reflect and remember loved ones lost during the pandemic.
For many people, getting out in the great outdoors represented a way to support mental wellbeing during the lockdowns, and parks and outdoor spaces were popular places for memorials to be sited.
Each of the 17 benches being unveiled over the next few weeks carries a plaque engraved with lines of poetry submitted by Blackburn with Darwen people as part of the National Festival of Making’s Of Earth & Sky project.
This project from the spring of 2021 encouraged people to write poetry and verse to express their feelings about the pandemic and share messages of hope and inspiration.
Martin Eden, Director of Place for Blackburn with Darwen Council, commented:
Based on what residents told us through the consultation, we knew we wanted to create a series of outdoor memorials. It made sense to us to make links with the National Festival of Making’s Of Earth & Sky project, which had already given local people the chance to express themselves during the pandemic – we felt that the two projects were a great fit.
The first two benches have been installed in Blackburn and Darwen town centres this week, each carrying lines of poetry by Blackburn resident Stuart Quinn:
Yes, people make a town.
You, me, we, us.
Blackburn resident Stuart Quinn went along to the launch to visit the two town centre benches that bear his poetry. He said:
The lockdowns were incredibly difficult for all of us: closed schools, community clubs and shops; deserted motorways and quiet streets; football played “behind closed doors” while stadiums were filled only with empty seats. These were all constant reminders of the thing we missed the most: each other.
The lines in the poem were born out of a photography hobby that myself and my youngest son took to during lockdown. While capturing scenes from various local landmarks it became more and more obvious that it isn’t buildings, or statues, or even the landscape that make a town but the people in it. People who do ordinary-but-amazing things every day yet are just ‘getting on with it’ – and they weren’t there.
These commemorative benches are a reminder of those difficult times but more than that they are a way for us to reconnect. It’s a genuinely humbling feeling to think that one of my poems could be an icebreaker for strangers to start up a conversation. I’m extremely proud to be recognised in this way, alongside a number of talented Blackburn people.
Other locations for the memorial benches include Mill Hill Park, Blacksnape play area, Roe Lee Park Dell and Turton Tower.
The Covid memorial benches have been created by Accrington based Ark Plastics using 100% recycled plastic. Through a social enterprise partnership with Crown Paint, Ark Plastics take granulated plastic from reclaimed paint pots and turn it into plastic products, such as these sturdy benches.
The plaques on each of the 17 benches carry a QR code that can be scanned to find out more about the Moment In Time Covid memorial project and read the poems in full.
Filed under : covid benches | Covid memorial