Creativity comes in many forms.
A while back our village embraced the creative as we all went goose mad. Not the live ones, nor cooked ones, rather foot tall white polystyrene models. Hundreds of them!
Then the challenge was set – to decorate these as beautifully, unusually, imaginatively as possible.
The gauntlet was thrown down by a local artist who is active within the community and after organising numerous Scarecrow Trails she fancied doing something a bit different, something directly related to the village. In the Middle Ages, as geese were driven to London for the fairs, our village became an overnight stop for the travellers. In celebration of this the Goose Trail was born.
All school pupils, participating households and businesses were given their own goose to decorate. I believe the final number was close to 300!
Who would have guessed the artistic flair this project would unleash – puns abounded, fun and wit at every goose, ideas both crazy and topical. An absolute wonder of colour, delight and yes, creativity. I hope you enjoy the brief tour with me.
The British sea-side was celebrated in two installations – just one aspect was slightly wrong. Where’s that breezy, gusty wind that lifts the umbrella and sends it somersaulting down the beach!
Of course, football is hugely popular and there are many supporters locally of London-based team West Ham – known as the Hammers. I wonder how the geese are faring in this match?
There was an international flavour to some of the exhibits and I liked this French one …. Oh, I just wanted to stop for some bread, cheese and wine…
This one referred to Sutton Hoo which is one of the most magnificent archaeological finds in England and is nearby. It dates back to the 500 or 600 AD and in the undisturbed burial ship there was a wealth of beautiful and high quality artefacts including a suite of metalwork dress fittings in gold and gems, a ceremonial helmet, shield and sword, a lyre, and many pieces of silverware.
A giant SpongeBob SquarePants graced one garden, cheekily chatting away to a goose with most unusual shaped eggs. Ouch.
Not to be outdone one household had a flair for mixing fairytales as they included their stalwart metal scarecrow.
This young goose was handsomely, meticulously turned out as a RAF officer – of course it can fly, it has wings!
The Top Gun display brought back great memories of seeing the film and particularly its initial dramatic moments.
Easter is soon upon us and in a few days I’m heading away to the peace and tranquility of the sea, lakes and forests of Sweden. We take this break every year and you can read a bit more about it here. I’ll pop into the blogging world when I get a chance, until then I wish you all a very Happy Easter – may calm, joy and peace be with you all.
Annika Perry 
LoL … great post, Annika 🙂 Love the unleashed creativity
and how this idea emphasizes your village’s history 🙂 ♥ ❤
So fun to share on my blog's fb page @ https://www.facebook.com/KnittingWithHeart/posts/609303879227633
Thank you so much for your lovely comment and for sharing on FB. I’m not on the latter but do appreciate it. Yes, I never knew there was all this hidden talent and creative spirit in the village – a wonderful eye-opener!
A wonderfully creative eye-opener, indeed! My pleasure to share your link, but no worries about fb 🙂 ♥ ❤
How very creative of you. I love the pictures.
I agree, Kathy. I was in awe and surprise at the creative spirit of the village – a lot of talent and humour hidden away!
What a wonderful and colorful tradition. So creative as well. Years back, our area had life-size horses (plaster?) in several poses and invited the public and groups to participate in coloring them. After the contest was over, these horses were placed all over as public art. I recall a construction site wall downtown asking for school groups to participate by writing poetry. My students wrote and illustrated Haiku poetry in German and won several prizes. Community involvement and support for the arts is so very important, I think. Thanks for such an interesting post this Easter season. Hope you are enjoying Sweden about now.
What a great idea – do they do still do this or was it just a one off?
As a West Ham supporter my favourite is the Cockney Geezers.
Thnaks for sharing this – it made my day
Mike
How clever and it looks like everyone had a lot of fun designing their geese!
The designing of the geese was all some talked about for weeks before – and what a wonderful surprise to see the variety and excellence of the creations.
Reblogged this on quirkywritingcorner.
Many thanks for the reblog. 😀
Lovely display!
Oh, absolutely. Magical creations!😀
Oh, these are absolutely wonderful. So creative and full of color and fun. I’m a huge Top Gun fan as well so that one really appealed. Wonderful lead up to Easter as well, thanks for sharing with us. 🙂
Miriam, so glad you liked these; they are wonderfully creative and brought some lovely colour for an ‘Easter’ time post! Some of the exhibits / installations had music accompanying them and I have a feeling this Top Gun goose creation was one of them – they got it just right! Have a brilliant Easter.😀
Thanks Annika. You too. 🙂
Have a wonderful Easter break, Annika! What a lot of fun you’ve left us with 🙂
That was the plan, Jo! 😀 To bring a bit of cheer for the Easter celebrations – packing pile is growing and can’t believe it’s soon holiday time! Wishing you a lovely Easter too.
These are wonderful. You might send pictures to Aflac (though their’s is a duck)–it might inspire a new advertising campaign. The Primary School Painted Geese is such a keeper.
Once again google saved the day as I had to find out about Aflac. I think it is a duck in their logo but it could definitely be brightened up by using one of these colourful creations. You’re right, I actually had tears when I saw the Primary School geese – I could just imagine the pupil’s hard work and concentration and the staff’s dedication. Also the only ones to actually have them as a gaggle of geese. I wonder what did happen with them all?
This is an amazing display. I liked Mon Goose!
It was brilliant and there were many other countries represented but it would have been too much to post all the photos.
That was quite the event and you covered it well with photos–a creative community! Wishing you a happy fun vacation 🙂
I like that, Janice – a ‘creative community’. I think everyone was surprised but the quality and imaginative designs – one was more of an installation taking up a whole front garden! It was tricky putting this together I must admit – so many photos to choose between and I could just have kept writing…Wishing you a very happy Easter. 😀
I love the whimsy in this project so much. I want to live in your village!!!
Eve, I’d like that too…you could come over for a glass of wine during the warm summer months…Whimsy! I like that and describes it so well.
Oh what fun, Annika. 🙂 Wishing your a Blessed and Beautiful Easter! ❤
It was some of the best fun ever in the village, Bette and although there have been smaller events, fetes etc since, nothing matched up to this weekend. Hope you have a lovely Easter too. 😀 Warmest wishes.
So. Much. Fun! Thank you for sharing these, Annika! I can’t imagine the creativity with all the geese, and not just the ones you shared. What a great way to involve the whole community. This is better than a pink yard flamingo contest 🙂
Now, Julie, you can’t leave it there! Pink Yard Flamingo Contest!! Go on, tell!! That sounds hysterical…You’re right there are so many photos I didn’t have room to put on – it was fun reliving the weekend and again being overawed at people’s inventiveness.
LOL! My brother and his wife did a Pink Yard Flamingo prank-your-friends fundraiser for Relay for Life (breast cancer fundraising). People pledged to have their friends wake up to a yard full of flamingos. The more you pledge, the more pink the yard. They had great fun (though had to set up the birds in the wee hours before people got up for work) and raised a lot of money. The contest came in when the friends tried to outdo each other with the sheer number of flamingos in the yard 🙂
What a wonderful idea and to such a brilliant cause! I just love this and can imagine the faces of the residents the next morning. This should go global!
Oh my gosh! What an awesome post! I can’t believe all the creativity that went into those geese! How fun! Makes me want to do it!
I hope you have a lovely vacation. Enjoy all that beauty!
Thank you so much, Jessica.😃 I was underwhelmed when I saw the boring white polystyrene model and feared it would all be a flop, so imagine the first morning heading out to walk around and being greeted with all these. Absolutely astonishing. I would love to see what you would come up with? Any ideas? Themes? Wishing you a very special Easter.
I can just “picture” you walking around in total awe! I bet that was beyond fun! I’d likes to have seen the little children’s faces! Even if they didn’t understand some of the theme references, an airplane is wayyyy cool! 🙂
We’re Mickey Mouse fans, so we’d maybe put ears on ours if we had one. 🙂 I hope you enjoy your Easter, too. Say hello to the ocean for me!
That’s another obvious one that no one made – hmm…very little disney at all. I like the idea of a goose with Mickey ear and all the right colours – would have been great. 😀
I’ll definitely say hi to the ocean from you; see if I post some pics after the holidays.
Can’t wait to see your pictures!
These are great and a great history lesson to boot. I was looking for a Hobbit amongst them but none was found.
Have a happy Easter in Sweden. JC
You’re right…a Hobbit one would have been great…in his little cosy home…my imagination is ticking but just too late! Wishing you a lovely Easter too – send some of your warm and sunny weather our way will you!😃
How creative! I love it. (The scarecrow trail sounds great too). I’m part of the arts committee in my town and we do “salmony” things. This gave me all kinds of ideas. Thanks. Have a wonderful trip to Sweden 🙂
I have to ask, Diana – what kind of ‘salmony’ things? Special days/events? Great you’re part of the arts committee; as a writer or do you paint? Do crafts? You could definitely do something like this with model salmon…the scarecrow weekends were terrific too; fun, inventive designs but after a few years the number of entries understandbably petered out; tricky to make a good scarecrow and two days of solid downpour on the last one did not help! Wishing you a peaceful and happy Easter. 😃
For adult artists we have large 3-D wooden salmon that they decorate and submit for a fall auction. And in May every year we have a Jr. Salmon Auction with pressboard fish decorated by high school students. Then we have salmon-themed art for sale at the Salmon Festival. Are you sensing a theme here? Ha ha. All the revenue supports arts programs in town and at the school. I muddle along artistically – mostly I’m a good organizer and grunt. 🙂
Hehe! Definitely sense a theme, somewhere…just don’t get it yet…😃😀 It all sounds like a lot of fun, involving everyone in the community and it feels good when the funds are given back to the town and school for all to enjoy. I bet you have a ball sorting everyone out! I’d love to see some of the creations…
This was so much fun to read and look at. So creative, indeed! 🙂
Thank you, Carol. 😀 I agree and never fail to be surprised by the creative spirit of humankind!
The RAF Goose brought to mind a true story. During WWII the military set up a system to deliver American aircraft to the UK, known as the North Atlantic Air Bridge. Various locations were chosen, and airfields built, quite a task in itself. Two of the airfields in Canada were in Newfoundland and Labrador. By pure coincidence they were at GANDER and GOOSE BAY. I know there are a lot of geese in Canada, but this always struck me as funny.
This has me chuckling…now I’m wondering how many names in Canada are goose-related! Probably not many, just a coincidence I’m sure – I just hope there weren’t many geese around to cause a danger to the aircraft.
That looks like a fun project. I’ll bet it was a lot of fun.
It was a brilliant couple of days – the sun shining, everyone out and about, meandering, chatting. There were quite a few ‘open garden’ events so we stopped for tea and scones at various locations, then completed the days with a drink in the local pub. Perfect.
This is fabulous, Annika! Thanks so much for brightening my day with these wonderful photographs. Mummy Goose…hilarious! Such creativity!
That is one of my favourite ones, Jill! I’m not the quickest on the uptake of puns so I loved this one straight away. I’m so happy they’re brightening your day – they are a joy to look at and it’s wonderful to see people being so creative. I must admit I was totally surprised as I’d just expected the geese to be painted beautifully, but nothing this inventive or on such a large scale.
Fantastic! What a great way for a community to have a whee of a time and satisfy their creative urges.
That struck me, Elaine – all these creative geniuses tucked away in cosy houses as if just waiting for an excuse to unleash their imaginative work. It only took one semi-crazy idea to bring everyone together in a creative way for the whole community.
There is hope for the world when a village can come together for so much fun and creativity.
Marching with the Geese – all the way to London! Astonishing. Wonder how many villages they had to stop at.
Tried to pick a favourite among the exhibits but they are just all so good.
Thank you for this happy post Annika and for interesting history to boot.
I always thought those geese must have been very fit to walk all that way! When the idea was mooted many, including myself, were sceptical – wondering how it could work, particularly after the success of the scarecrow weekends. Luckily the organiser had a vision and it came together wonderfully and all the exhibits were a feast for the eyes and imagination.
What a lovely post, particularly enjoyed the Top Gun reference. Great film that one… Have a lovely Easter Annika. x
Initially I’d put in a clip of ‘Take My Breath Away’ from the film to accompany the post but it did seem to detract from it rather. Fun seeing the clips again though…strange how memories accumulate!😀 wishing you a lovely Easter and have a great birthday party up in Edinburgh!
Thanks Annika. The party’s down in Brighton this time. Seaside air nothing like it. Hope the weather will be nice!
Wow, what a triumph that turned out to be! 😄 What a fantastic and hilarious way to bring a community together. Really interesting historical facts here, too. This has made my day!
It was a great weekend and it’s amazing how all these people appeared who we’d never seen before! The lady who organised it is terrific, a real formidable character, talented artist but after this event she became quite ill for over a month so unfortunately that was it! so glad you liked the snippets of facts – I didn’t want to over do it but Sutton Hoo is an amazing place and we all felt something walking around, spooky.