Starcross School and The Swan of the Exe

 Starcross Primary School  will collect plastic milk bottles and make feathers for our sculpture of  The Swan of the Exe. The sculpture is due to be installed for TRAIL on Teignmouth seafront in the week starting July 11th, and will remain there throughout the summer holidays. 

The Swan of the Exe project will be led by Starcross artist Vicky Jocher, who has just opened her studio in the Brunel Tower. 

photograph from http://www.plasticoceans.net/

The Environmental Impact

Annually approximately 500 billion plastic bags
 are used worldwide.
More than one million bags are used every minute.

Since the ethos of TRAIL is to protest about the vast quantities of plastic in the Plastic Oceans, then it's appropriate that our Swan of the Exe is a thrown-away plastic dinghy. We may recycle our plastic bottles, and perhaps feel guilty about the amount of plastic packaging we buy, yet whole boats made of plastic can end up on the bottom of the ocean.




The blue plastic dinghy, given to us by Teignbridge, is completely different to the luxurious gold&white of the Victorian yacht, The Swan of the Exe; but we will mimic some of her detail. Her pennant is here described in Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries:   
upon a silken azure banner, pendent from a brass rod which the bird carries in its mouth, is worked in letters of gold,  its title, The Swan of the Exe.


Taken from Full text of "Devon & Cornwall notes & queries"