Ashford welcomes plastic cow sculpture

18th July 2019

Students have created an animal sculpture out of plastic where it has been unveiled in the centre of the town’s High Street.

Ashford’s plastic cow has been designed by Art and Design pupils at Ashford College in Elwick Road to raise awareness of single-use plastics.

Lecturer Casey Brett, whose students created the cow out of milk bottles – believes the artwork will highlight the issue even further as the town continues to celebrate its Year of the Environment campaign.

“Students chose the cow idea because it focuses on the town’s rural community and its history as a market town,” she said.

“We used plastic and dairy bottles to show this theme, and collected all of them just from our campus and in a really short space of time too.”

The cow was made out of plastic milk bottles

Miss Brett added that everyone was stunned by how much plastic was in the area.

“A lot of the students were really shocked at the amount of waste collection around the college.

“Many have already looked at ways to use less plastic because I think it was really eye-opening for all of us involved.”

The sculpture is due to stay in the town centre for the remainder of the summer, before it finds a new home elsewhere.

The milk bottle display is the second to be constructed by the college, following their creation of a flower garden in May, which was also located in the High Street.

Last year, Ashford Borough announced they had recycled approximately 180 tonnes of HDPE plastic – the equivalent to 4.5 million four pint milk bottles.

Pensioner makes stunning handcrafted models

A pensioner whose hobby is creating handcrafted wooden models has had some of his work placed in the Ashford museum.

70 year-old Graham Cleaver, who drove tractors on a farm for 35 years prior to his retirement, saw an advertisement in Ashford For You magazine looking for exhibits.

Mr Cleaver crafted two models, a JCB tractor and a steam traction engine, from his garage in Homewood Road before donating the vehicles last week.

Mr Cleaver created the models in his garage

He said: “When I saw the story in the magazine I thought I could create a model to donate, but ended up building two.”

“I don’t know how long it took to do but a lot of work has gone into it!”

The retiree said that he crafted the movable models using tools such as chisels and hand planes after studying similar Lego designs.

He added: “I spent 35 years sitting in a tractor cab on the farm so it was very interesting building that model.

“People ask me to create all sorts of models for them; word just gets around about what I do and it gives me a lot of enjoyment building them, and I hope visitors get that too.”