Through the Mesh

Through the Mesh is a video piece created with Y5 children at Bewsey Lodge Primary school, using the inherent uses and properties of wire as metaphors for human feelings.

From connecting us across the Channel with the first telecommunications wires, to dividing us with barb wire during the second world war, the wire works of Warrington have shipped wire across the globe for a multitude of uses including everyday objects such as chicken wire, sieves, coffee filters, electrical wires, etc. They are part of our everyday landscapes, used for architecture, fencing, encaging…

The children worked with creative director Lou Chapelle and collaborators choreographer Claire Wellens and production company Ludovico to create a video piece exploring wire main properties: To connect, to protect and filter, to encage and divide.

Trapped inside,
Like an animal in a zoo.
Do they feel safe inside?
Do they mind seeing the world
Through the mesh?

Created just after the Covid lockdown, the children used the metaphors of wire to talk about feelings of safety, feelings of isolation, feelings of fear, and feelings connections / lack of connections. They imagined how it would feel like to live in a wire box, a box that could at times be a safe place to hide, at times be a tight and frustrating space, at times be a way to filter the things we like and the things we are scared of.

They created patterns, poems and movements to create a collective narrative exploring how breaking out of our own individual boxes, and being more open to each other and to the world, can make us feel amazing again.

Explore the project and behind the scene here.