During periods of celebration, ships can be ‘dressed overall’ by stringing international maritime signal flags from a ship’s masthead to masthead and then down to the taff-rail. To celebrate Cutty Sark’s 150th anniversary Royal Museums Greenwich commissioned Our Cube to deliver an artist led project to work with five community and school groups to create a set of 40 original flags to 'dress' the ship for it's anniversary year.
Artists and project manager Hannah Cushion worked alongside artists Harriet Mena-Hill, Al Johnson, Marie Therese Ross, María-Alejandra Huicho and story teller Olivia Armstrong and Our Cube we identified five lines of investigation and each group explored and responded to a different strand of the ships heritage.
Over the course of this project we worked with participants from, Age UK, Woolwich, The Tower Project, Newhaven Pupil Referral Unit, St Ursula's Covent School and Linton Mead Primary School.
Participants were able to visit the Cutty Sark before undertaking a series of creative workshops. The compositions of the final flags reflect the visual language of traditional signal flags and capture participants creative responses to the ship and it's heritage.
The flags were on display from the end of February 2019 to February
2020.
