Do you remember our MASSIVE, wish-covered elephant??

This year marks twenty years since our first big project – MASSIVE. It aimed to make people smile, to brighten up a drab and dull day in Buxton and give our local community the opportunity to create an image of something that made them happy.

We worked with local artists and over a thousand volunteers and children in local schools in the lead up to Buxton Festival and Fringe 2000.

It all began with a dream had by Anna Watson, which involved huge aluminium rainbows and Fairfield. The dream instilled “a hum of excitement and a strong sense of determination” to make a child smile and offer an imaginative and colourful space for people to be. “It was born out of my love of community arts” says Anna, “having been raised by a family of artists, clowns and puppeteers and a desire to bring magic into the lives of others including my then 3 year-old daughter, Maisie. I woke up one morning in the summer of 1999 and envisioned an interactive art installation which would connect people from every corner of the community: young, old, less-able, isolated and the more gregarious.”

Anna teamed up with old school friend Chris Robinson and Funny Wonders and a “big furry elephant with purple tusks and a funky coat of hexagons was conceived”. Bryn Layton came up with the name; Millennium Arts Supporting Society Involving Velvet Elephants (MASSIVE) and we applied for funding.

Chris, along with the help and skills of nearly 20 others, built the elephant body out of willow withies, bamboo canes and chicken wire. Chris had just moved back to the area and the project provided him with “a means of finding his place again within a community he used to know well”.