Time Travelling Bus Stop

In 2018 I was commisioned by Lairg and District Community Initiative (LDCI) to renovate and decorate a very unloved, neglected bus stop on the Main Street in Lairg, Sutherland in partnership with Lairg School, kindly financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

BEFORE                                                                  AFTER

I thought long and hard about the theme we should use that would be applicable to all of our community and commuters and developed the idea of "Life in Lairg Through the Ages".

We knew that the earliest known event in Lairg was the asteroid strike (see Lairg Asteroid Project page) and the most recent notable change to our lives in the village was the windfarms and 4G technology so I then plotted my way along a nine metre paper draft that was the length of the border aroung the bus stop the timeline of Lairg from the earliest known building, through Viking, the Black Death, the laying out of Lairg as we know it in the nineteenth century, the railway, our iconic buildings, electricty, John Lennon's infamous crash here in the 1960's to the present day and beyond...

Each panel was then hand painted and printed onto weatherproof board.

Once again I ran a series of art workshops with the pupils and used their designs and  styles to influence my finished paintings. The pupils also approved the the draft design after consultation session with them.

You can clearly see their influence in the Shin Hydro image and in the smiley/grumpy suns!

I painted the bus stop a cheery blue after giving it a deep clean and new clear plastic panels were added.

We ran a competition to finsh the sentence "I like living in Lairg because...." to be clearly written, wrapped around the bus stop. This was won by Hannah McLeod with runner-up Rori Fritz-Hewer. The winning slogan was "I like living in Lairg because it's nice and small and I get to know everyone I meet". The other winner was "I like living in Lairg because you can always find your rainbow."

The Time Travelling Bus Stop was officially opened in Spring 2019.

Details of the opening event can be read by clicking the link.

https://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/travelling-through-time-at-bus-stop-179165/