Tom Tobia

Community Kite Project: Free kite-making and flying workshops

A collaborative project starting this March. We hosted a week-long festival of kite making and decorating workshops in a gallery and workshop in central London, for all and sundry. Local community groups, schools, hospitals, offices and families plucked from the street were invited to build a kite each, and the best bit - it was FREE! No cost, no catch, just a chance to explore your inner child, get imaginative and make yourself a fully functioning kite to keep. What could be more fun than that?

We will be hosting a kite flying festival for everyone who knuckles down and makes a kite with us this Spring. In Lahore, where the world’s biggest kite festival takes place, over two million kites can be seen being flown from rooftops and open spaces across the city. Two million is a lot, but we’d like our first flying day a special one and apply the same ethos of taking over the urban environment with fun, colour and people enjoying themselves together. We’re planning a morning of creativity, imagination and outdoor family fun for anyone who fancies it, and for absolutely nothing.

We are aiming to create a sustainable model whereby the first kite-making residency generates enough funds to run the second, and so on. Considering every event will be totally free for everyone, this could be seen as a challenge. But we have a plan! We will be exhibiting a large array of hand-made kites by eminent UK artists iin the gallery space. The exhibition will display the fine craft-making skills of CKP co-founder Christopher Jarratt, as well as the dexterous artistry of another co-founder Jo Peel alongside her illustrious comrades. The kites will be for sale, and the revenue generated will be put aside to fund CKP Version 2.0.

We believe that striving for family time, more wholesome outdoor pursuits and exploring imagination are worthwhile and worthy goals. We also feel that the best way to encourage more people to do so is to show them how much fun it can be rather than beating them over the head with a proverbial stick of negative rhetoric. It is true that more and more people are less and less engaged with the world around them, and in particular with each other, and whilst we embrace technology and what it brings to everyone (we wouldn’t be on here otherwise), we believe in the power of bringing people together, in being outdoors and in flying kites! We’re not kite-flying fascists by the way - we don’t think it’s the only answer to a more fulfilling life, just one we quite enjoy. We hope that by providing a free and fun activity, CKP can be one step in the direction of an inclusive, engaged and fulfilled society, one postcode at a time.

Additionally, we believe that in a throwaway society it has never been more important to encourage people to create objects of quality. Things should be made to last, and the pride engendered in making an object you would be proud to hang on your bedroom wall as opposed to use and bin should not be underestimated or under valued. This means we intend to offer quality materials and create kites that might not be the cheapest possible, but equally are not just about the making, but about the keeping and treasuring of a hand made object.