Gandy, R.J., Spruce, J., 2018.

Celebrating Stan & Joe: Wellbeing benefits of celebrating heroes through Art

Stan Cullis and Joe Mercer were two of English football's most successful players and managers, who were coincidentally schoolmates at Cambridge Road Primary School in Ellesmere Port during the 1920's. A memorial is proposed to celebrate this unique circumstance, and funding is sought from the football clubs where they played and/or managed, and other potential sponsors. Creative arts workshops are to be used to generate responses that lead the memorial's form and character, involving children from the school and students from Liverpool's School of Art & Design. The workshops will generate ideas through a variety of media and creative processes, including photographic imagery, figurative drawing and three-dimensional modelling of sculptural forms. They will engage the children in themes associated with the memorial and that reflect the school's core values, such as self-belief, motivation, perseverance, social mobility, wellbeing, and citizenship; thereby exploring and promoting these positive values amongst the school's pupils. Longer term, the project is intended to provide the basis for annual arts workshops to be incorporated into the School's curriculum, alongside other activities such as sporting events, to provide a legacy beyond the recognition that the memorial itself would generate.

Celebrating Stan Cullis & Joe Mercer PFA supported community project