Have you heard the one about the octopus jet skiing into Clacton Pier?
We recently had the honour of announcing that the winning school Octopus Ahoy! sculpture design, out of the 60 schools, was ‘Unity’, by the wonderful staff and students at Holland Haven Primary School.
The school have provided a wonderful summary about their octopus and it’s creation:
‘Meet our octopus – Unity. One definition of unity is ‘joined as a whole’. This design has been created using as many of our children’s drawings as possible. With different sizes and an array of pattern and colour, the whole school from Early Years to Year 6, has been included on our octopus. Our school has a strong family feel and this is reflected in this collage of over 100 individual designs, joining together as one whole.’
To celebrate the win the winning sculpture was chauffeured via sea on a jet ski from the Martello Tower to Clacton Pier at 1:30pm to thunderous applause from the school children of Holland Haven watching on the beach. All sixty of the school designed octopus sculptures took their seats at the Electric Palace Cinema in Harwich for the final judging, with a panel from Clacton Pier choosing the winner on the day.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/k9Bz0e9GLPE
The Head Teacher of Holland Haven Primary School, Mrs Sue Bardetti, said “We are absolutely delighted to have the winning octopus. The children have thoroughly enjoyed producing designs to be part of the final sculpture. They were thrilled when we told them we had won, and were very excited about the presentation.”
Our octopus mascot CJ of course came down to the Pier to congratulate the students and staff on their well-deserved win – he was extremely impressed by the artistic talent shown on their sculpture from all of the students involved!
You can see ‘Unity’ in person from the launch of the trail on the 25th June – download the Octopus Ahoy! app on Apple or Android to find the location, along with all other school octopuses and the large-scale sculptures by local Essex artists.