Community bluebell planting at Hackney Downs

The bluebells will be transplanted from the gallery patio to Hackney Downs park. Photograph: Penny Sadubin

This month you might have walked past the WW Gallery Patio Projects on the Queensdown Road without a second glance. No snowmen made from mud or wax kebabs, April’s project, Penny Sadubin’s Urban Bluebells has been masquerading as a typical patio-garden.

April certainly has been the cruellest month, but despite endless rain and mysterious hail storms, Sadubin’s bluebells have flowered.  This Sunday, 29 April, the unassuming Urban Bluebells will take on their real meaning as public art when they are donated to Hackney Downs and planted in the park.

As an artist whose practice is informed by the natural world and our interactions with it, the planting on Sunday will be an essential act in Sadubin’s Urban Bluebells, which has been flowering on the Queensdown Road since the beginning of April. This community gathering is an open invitation for anyone and everyone to be a part of the installation, as active participants where other works of art might only allow us to be observers.

The WW Gallery’s rolling public art programme, The Patio Projects, has sought from the outset to engage new audiences in art, particularly the local residents who have found it planted on their doorsteps.  Sadubin takes this one step further, welcoming residents and families to be a part of the project with the suggestion that if the weather looks promising they should come with a picnic.

Participants will be able to take part in another community art piece; by adding a willow whip to an oversize Willow Ball with artist Elsa Godfrey. Godfrey has been taking the ever-growing WILLOW BALL to community events and schools since it was commissioned for an exhibition last year.

From 11am a group will meet at the Patio Projects to collect the bluebells before walking across the Downs to plant them in the Community Orchard at 12 noon.  The hope is that they will colonise the shady slope and flower for years to come.  The event will also be supported by local café, The Russet, who will be providing tasters of Russet Apple Juice and Dalston Cola.

Bring trowels, gloves, people, and sunshine if you can.

Community bluebell planting
From 11am, Sunday 29 April 2012
WW Gallery Patio Projects
30 Queens Down Road, opposite the Hackney Downs park
E5 8NN

For more information go to Landscape of Change or Wilson Williams Patio Projects.