Spring On Stage- Designing a Bug Inspired Backdrop for Chester

Since November 2021 we have been working with the festival and creativity champions Wild Rumpus and Brummie fabricator extraordinaires Groove. to design and build a 20 piece colourful wooden backdrop as part of Chester: Designed By Nature. See MORE images of the final installation here.

Supported by the Welcome Back Fund, Spring Blooms is the third and final part of Chester Designed by Nature, the ambitious project that re-wilds unexpected places in Chester, re-energising the city with the fresh shoots of Spring, in partnership with Storyhouse and Destination Chester.

Residential NOV 2021

The project started (unusually!) with a 2 night stay in a treehouse?! The project included a residential where we would get clued up on CDM, health and safety and also brainstorm in the amazing surroundings in the woodland retreat. We have shared our experience more on our instagram page here. Have a peek at some of the woodland antics that occurred during those out of the ordinary days in November 2021.

Design DEC 2021

December was spent organising our thoughts and deciding what our ‘Spring’ installation would be. We had highlighted to Wild Rumpus we were interested in taking on the challenge of a ‘stage’ (which they had indicated they wanted one of the commissions to be).

This was not going to be an all singing all dancing stage but why not AIM BIG as we hadn’t had any opportunities to work on a project this scale before (Over 10ft).

We then made some decisions. We wanted the stage to be:

COLOURFUL- Inspired by the amazing colourful bugs in nature
PORTABLE- Able to be flat packed and taken in a car to Chester
NATURAL- We were keen to keep the stage ‘natural’ and sustainable, limiting the amount of waste throughout the build.
OUTSIDE- In front of Chester Cathedral fixed into grass.

One of our most final digital mock-ups with the final colours chosen

Make JAN 2021

This is when Bria and Nath from Groove. got involved. We told them our idea for 6 wooden ‘pillars’ to attach the shapes onto and they sourced the appropriate wood for the posts, cut out the shapes on their CNC machine and found suitable brackets to fit it all together. They even made some nifty CNC brackets for the back of the shapes!

Meanwhile in Pickle Studio we were sanding, priming, painting and sealing the 20 illustrated boards to go onto the pillars…

Test JAN 2021

Groove’s car park in less rural Digbeth was the test space for the piece. We put together all of the columns, marked out where the shapes were to go and fit everything together as if it was for real! The only thing we were missing was a big cathedral as a backdrop?

Install FEB 2021

Sandwiched between two incredibly stormy days was our install day, which we felt AMAZINGLY smug about. We were even treated to a bit of sunshine as we put together the stage, with the help of the Wild Rumpus team, in front of the Cathedral in Chester city centre.