This blog post is about exploring the links between literacy and birds through the medium of an an arts-based regeneration project based upon the bird life around the area of Morecambe Bay. A Flock of Words, was created by Gordon Young, Russ Coleman and Why Not Associates in 2003, It is a 300m typographic pavement of jokes, quotes, nursery rhymes, song lyrics, proverbs and sayings. It’s a wonderful mishmash celebration of birds and people created from concrete, granite, brass, bronze and steel.
If your school is within in a day visit of Morecambe or there is a planned residential to North West England, then this is an ideal free day out. It works particularly well on a wet day as the water highlights the stonework and text even better. As well as this walkway, there is also the Stone Jetty and the sea front that all have a bird focus. Combine it with a visit to Leighton Moss or another nearby RSPB reserve and this would be a lot of fun.
For the rest of us, do not despair. The work provides many ideas to explore and develop in our own school grounds or nearby space to enjoy and celebrate bird word play!
Do literacy trails within your school grounds need a defined start and finish?
Firstly, it does not matter whether you begin in the middle or either end of the Flock of Words walk. Part of the joy of this artwork is that you have to read it in all directions. So you see people with their heads twisted and walking in strange ways as they absorb the words and meanings.
Nearby on the Stone Jetty, there was a circular word search with a bird theme… after all who says word searches have to be oblong?
What cultural or religious references can you find about different birds?
I began “in the beginning” by reading relevant bird quotes from the Bible. I think we can forget that religious texts provide some great food for thought…
The story of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood, recognises the contribution of birds to finding a safe haven for the other animals…
It’s marked by the dove carrying the olive branch, which remains a symbol of peace. Have a look at how The Coombes School celebrate the value of journeys, both spiritual and geographical annually in this blog post.
What well-known bird poems and nursery rhymes exist and how could they be shared with others in an outdoor context?
There really is something for everyone here. In Edward Lear’s famous poem, The Owl and the Pussy Cat, look at the pattern in the text. It is a good way of getting children to focus in and read. Often with poems and quotes, the text needs read several times with a moment to stop and ponder.
What proverbs and well-known sayings reference birds? What about finding quotes from other languages or cultures?
I wonder how many people have stood in this person’s footprints whilst reading the proverb. It was a very small set of footprints, child-size in fact…
And sayings were given special attention… “as bald as a coot” is a good example…
Explore collective nouns for different bird species. How could these be portrayed in your outdoor space?
The benches that lined the walkway were all quite plain and similar. Each one had a different collective noun for a bird. So as well as a bazaar of guillemots, there was a murmuration of starlings and various others. I don’t remember seeing an unkindness of ravens though!
Nearby on the Stone Jetty, some of the seating was beautiful and adorned with tongue twisters:
What bird jokes can we find and display in creative ways outside?
Bird jokes littered the ground in attractive layouts…
At the Stone Jetty near the Flock of Words walkway were other examples of jokes displayed with illustrations:
In what ways can we add movement into our bird word play?
The poem in the photo below isn’t very clear. But as you follow the arrows from one piece of slate to the next, you can read out the nursery rhyme “Two Little Dicky Birds“…
Or how about a hopscotch rhyme? Below on the Stone Jetty in Morecambe, the instructions for playing lie on the grey stables either side – it’s the rhyme “One for sorrow, two for joy…”. Perhaps your class can invent their own hopscotch bird rhymes.
When I first saw the rhyme below I just thought it was some arty decoration that I didn’t really get. It was my son who pointed out the words… “There was an old owl who lived in an oak“
The layout of the texts were all very different. “Who killed Cock Robin” was a beautiful series of granite discs well-proportioned and complementing the other works nearby nicely.
What strikes me about all this work, is the creative use of known texts. Very often children recognise words and logos outside. Having nursery rhymes and songs etched into a pathway is unusual and I would love to see a young child look at some of the work and see the light dawning on their face.
How can we apply this approach to our own school grounds and outdoor space?
Possibilities include:
- Exploring the 3D nature of our outdoor space: can we add songs, rhymes, quotes, proverbs, collective nouns and more to walls, the ground, the windows, hanging displays, attached to drainpipes, lamp posts and so on.
- Do we always need to just chalk our ideas onto the asphalt ground surface? If so how can we do this in ways that are interesting, creative and arty? Can we use luggage tags or mini chalkboards, stones or other ways of displaying text?
- Is it better that we go for temporary creations that are cheap to do rather than assuming we have to have a posh permanent variation of a Flock of Words – public art exists to inspire our own creativity rather than copy.
We don’t need big literacy art projects, but thinking about the interplay between language, people and place interests me. I think it’s got untapped potential in all sorts of ways. Saying this I remain fascinated by the choice of fonts, stone and other materials in the Flock of Word. It isn’t something that I have given much thought to, until now. Hmm… ideas set in in stone…
This blog post was originally published in August 2012.
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