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We are passionate about heralding community projects to bring our society together to discuss, educate and contemplate on national and global issues that our society and environment faces.
Through the years, we have undertaken countless projects involving schools, organisations, councils and more! You can see details of our past projects below.
National Bottle Top Giraffe Environmental Project
Will our necks be long enough to collect all your bottle tops?
Designed specifically for primary schools, community groups, clubs and associations all across the UK, this unique recycling project aims to educate children and communities about the importance of protecting our planet whilst inspiring them to think both innovatively and creatively in order to help make important environmental changes.
Richard Jones, senior communications specialist at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), originally floated the idea of working with the British Ironwork Centre to create a sculpture to mark the landmark. He said: “I have known the team at the British Ironwork Centre for many years, and having been involved in a number of exciting projects with them in the past. I knew they would be the perfect partners to create something that reflects how passionate we all are about the NHS.”
Clive Knowles, the Chairman of the British Ironwork Centre, wanted to create the sculpture at no cost to the NHS using obsolete hospital equipment donated by hospitals across the Shropshire region and beyond. Through the use of upcycled medical equipment, the sculpture not only highlights the medical legacy of the NHS, but it also puts unused items to good use.
This sculpture involved the meticulous collecting of old bits and pieces from archive rooms, metal skips, and hospital grounds before being lovingly pieced together using the likes of antiquated blood pressure monitors, parts of hospital beds, surgical hands, microscopes, wheelchairs, a former anaesthetic machine, and even a broken dialysis machine! Beautifully detailed, the full sculpture took over three months to complete from start to finish.
Clive Knowles, Owner and Chairman of the British Ironwork Centre, said: “We were delighted to work with SaTH in creating this stunning sculpture to mark the 70th anniversary of the NHS. It reflects our love for the NHS but also the kind, caring and hard-working people who work in the organisation throughout Shropshire.”
The sculpture was officially unveiled at a charity fun day at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on the 7th of July 2018, where it now remains stood proudly outside of the hospital’s general ward, ready to be viewed and admired by patients, families and staff for many years to come.
70 Years of the NHS
To celebrate and honour 70 wonderful years of the NHS in 2018, we wanted to create an entirely unique sculpture for Shrewsbury Hospital. Created by the Ironworks alongside local sculptor, Luke Kite, and a number of local nurses, this sculpture takes the form of a heart, symbolising our nation’s love for the NHS whilst depicting a fascinating story of medical history and legacy.
As soon as the project was announced, we received a HUGE number of enquiries from schools all across the region who wanted to take part in this unique opportunity. The project officially ended in October 2019, and the Centre was practicality bursting with bright and colourful cabinet knobs delivered to us by all participating schools. The official judges joined us once we had received all entries in order to pick winners for each school and an overall winner for the project. These judges included Roger Hammond, Cynthia Hammond, Sandy Wilkinson and Geoff Wilkinson. All four judges thoroughly enjoyed looking at each and every cabinet knob and, with so many amazing entries to see, they found it very difficult to pick the winners.
The winning designs from each school were chosen for their uniqueness, style and overall design quality. The overall winning design was created by Holly from Welshampton Primary School. The judges chose her design as they felt it was the most universal and would perfectly complement most décor styles. Additionally, they liked the fact that the design looked different every time they looked at it! A HUGE congratulations to Holly, who designs will be reproduced to join our existing cabinet knob range, and a massive well done to every other student who participated in the project. All proceeds made from the sale of the winning design will be donated to charity.
Roger Hammond Art & Enterprise Project
Made possible by our beneficiary, Mr Roger Hammond of Whitchurch, our Arts & Enterprise project was specifically designed to provide a unique platform for regional primary schools to explore their creativity whilst showcasing their artistic talents on a potentially global scale. The project involved decorating white cabinet knobs with innovative, eye-catching and fashionable designs, with the winning design joining our existing range in our showroom and on our website!
Every day, our ocean and marine life are exposed to a number of hardships, many of which are directly impacted by humanity and the way that we live our everyday lives. With eight million metric tons of plastic entering our ocean every year, 80% of marine pollution coming from land-based activity, over 300,000 dolphins and porpoises killed by discarded fishing nets each year, and our coral reef on the brink of extinction, it really is time that we all step up to better protect our ocean. Whilst hundreds of ocean clean-up and protection initiatives exist across the world, we feel that education lies at the heart of it all. Through projects just like this one, we hope children and young people are given the knowledge and tools necessary to make a real difference to our future environment.
This project featured 20+ fish sculptures, which had each been primed and readied to be painted/decorated by school students. Each participating school received a fish, which they painted/decorated using their chosen design to encapsulate the children’s thoughts and feelings surrounding our ocean and the way in which our society can make positive changes to the damage that has been caused. For example, one school may choose to focus on just the coral reef whilst another may wish to focus on the poaching industry. Whatever you choose, all schools ensured that their subject involves the ocean whilst providing an important point of tuition for their students.
Following the project and the completed fish being handed to Telford & Wrekin Council, it is planned for a sculpture trail to be created spanning across Telford Town Centre. The trail will then allow young people from all across the country to reflect upon the way we interact with our ocean, with every participating and non-participating school benefitting from the educational messages behind each fish design.
School’s Ocean Trail Project
Designed specifically to create further awareness and to better educate school children about the importance of protecting our oceans and marine life, the School’s Ocean Trail Project was open to all local and regional schools in the Telford & Wrekin area. In continuation of our work with Telford and our aim to continuously tackle social issues, we have specifically chosen the town as the focal point for this trail as they have never undertaken a project like this and we believe their young people will greatly benefit from it.
Schools Tin Can Appeal
In 2017 our Tin Can Appeal was launched to collect ONE MILLION tin cans for our project ‘Don’t Bin It, Tin It’.
This project intended to highlight the amazing opportunities for creating something useful and beautiful from general household waste. Our aim was to create a giant and spectacular bust of Her Majesty the Queen from all of the cans collected. These could be donated from a variety of sources, including schools, prisons, home education networks, Guides and Scout groups, and local businesses.
As part of the competition, we provided starter packs to get each school started and inspired! These packs included an information sheet providing details on every type of rock found in the UK, along with a bag of pebbles to kickstart the mosaic piece.
600 schools took part in the competition, with Kinnerley Church of England Primary School crowned the winners! Their owl mosaics represented each class in the school, and they had involved the whole community in sourcing and collecting pebbles and materials for their mosaics. They won a VIP school trip to the Ironworks, plus a certificate!
Each runner up school also received a certificate, plus a free school trip.
Elizabeth Madin, Head of School, was delighted that their school were named the winners. “We are absolutely thrilled to have won the British Ironworks mosaic competition”, she said.
“We have some very talented young people at Kinnerley Primary School and what was even more special was how well they worked collaboratively to produce such fantastic end results, from Nursery right through to Year 6. The fact that the owl designs reflect our classes and who we are is extra special too. We are now looking forward to our prize visit to the Ironworks!”
2021 International Schools Mosaic Competition
Our schools mosaic competition was designed to provide children with the opportunity to get creative and to develop their artistic skills, whilst learning about the beauty of nature and caring for the great outdoors.
Using a combination of different stones and pebbles, we asked the children to create a stunning mosaic. The piece of art can either highlight something that is important to your school, an animal that is in danger of becoming extinct, an important world issue or, indeed, anything!
On 23 March 2020, the nation entered it’s first Coronavirus lockdown, throwing the whole country into uncertainty and worry. Everyone was ordered to stay home, and businesses closed their doors without knowing when the world would be normal again.
Charities in Crisis
Following this first lockdown, we began seeing a multitude of reports stating that charities were in crisis. These charities, who so heavily rely on fundraising, were no longer able to hold their charity events and as such this plummeted their charity income. Overnight, the cake sales, the fun runs and the raffles had to stop. The causes were still there, and funds were desperately needed, but the money coming in from fundraising had dramatically declined.
Bringing Positivi-tree to the Charities
We saw these terrible headlines and wanted to do our bit to help. After brainstorming, one of our first ideas was this Rainbow Tree sculpture that we created to assist with raising much needed funds for charity. This concept was created with the idea that people would buy the wonderfully colourful leaves on the tree, and the money raised from these purchases would then be given to the charities in need. Although the leaves are no longer for sale, the demand showed us how truly important this cause is, and the Rainbow tree has been the catalyst for further sculptures to assist many different charities.
When we were contacted by the NHS to create some concept drawings for the Princess Royal Hospital in Shropshire, we created the concept of the Rainbow Tree. This 16ft tall tree is filled with around 200 leaves, all painted in the colours of the rainbow. The trunk is substantial and features a bark effect along with an Owl’s nest. Depicting the strength of the NHS in protecting the public throughout the pandemic as well as the rainbow aspect depicting the hope of the nation, it also highlights the need for everyone to play their part in protecting our environment.
The Rainbow Tree has now been completed and we think that it looks fantastic. We hope that it brings a lot of joy to all who visit the Princess Royal Hospital.
Rainbow Tree
Following the first lockdown in the pandemic, we began seeing a multitude of reports stating that charities were in crisis. These charities, who so heavily rely on fundraising, were no longer able to hold their charity events and as such this plummeted their charity income. We saw these terrible headlines and wanted to do our bit to help. After brainstorming, one of our first ideas was this Rainbow Tree sculpture that we created to assist with raising much needed funds for charity.
Here at the Ironworks, we are pretty serious about doing our bit to help protect the beautiful planet that we live in – whether that’s through reducing waste, cutting out plastic or creating art to promote the protection of our environment. We love to get the community involved in everything that we do, and our environmental efforts are certainly no exception. As proved on a global scale, we believe that the next generation are at the forefront of ecological protection which is why getting schools involved in our environmental projects is so important to us.
Every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic ends up in our ocean. Not only does this plastic debris harm and kill fish, marine mammals and seabirds, it also pollutes the human food chain. Whilst recycling and beach clean-up initiatives are important, the most effective changes come through education. ‘Flipper’ the dolphin not only encourages recycling and the reduction of plastic consumption, but also acts as a visual protest against the plastic industry. The sculpture is designed to raise awareness, to encourage children to look into alternatives to plastics, and to educate young people about the harm that plastics cause to marine life and how it eventually affects us all.
‘Flipper’ can now be seen here at the Centre, ready to be filled with your plastic bottles. We are encouraging all of our visiting schools and young people to collect and bring in their empty plastic bottles to help fill the sculpture. Once a significant number of plastic bottles have been collected, we will use them to create something innovative and useful for the community. Any and all ideas are welcome!
Victory Flowers
To celebrate the worlds emergence from COVID and the global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have offered these victory flowers FREE to the World Health Organisation (WHO) to use as symbols of victory over the virus.
We hope that they will use them as inspirational symbols in recognising their partners and key individuals that have worked incredibly hard in saving millions of the worlds people.
Everlasting Poppies
In 2018, we teamed up with the Royal British Legion to commemorate 100 years since World War I by creating everlasting poppy sculptures.
Our poppies were on display in London as part of the centenary celebration, and sparked interest of hundreds of people wanting to buy our poppies. Our initial stock of these sculptures sold out with a matter of hours.
Poppies were priced at just £19.99 a poppy, with 50% of profits going towards helping British veterans and ex-serviceman to live on after their time is served.
Supporting Start-Up Enterprises in Shropshire
According to the Shropshire Economic Profile January 2017, Shropshire was recognised as having a relatively low level of start-up enterprises, which we wanted to provide assistance with. We have previously provided support for start up businesses, mostly relating to heritage and traditional trades. These included trades such as silversmithing, pottery and floristry. These small enterprises were mentored and supported until they reached such a stage of independence that they are ready to leave the Centre and establish their footprint elsewhere in the county.
Hope House Children’s Hospice Garden
We designed a garden especially for Hope House, with all proceeds from the garden entirely donated to the hospice. It was hoped that all visitors to our centre appreciated the colourful and vibrant display. The inspiration followed a Hope house visit, challenging our staff to join the Hope House lake Vyrnwy cycle challenge
Our Community Programmes
Our Community Programmes
