Vandals have forced organisers of this week’s River Brue Festival in Highbridge to move one of their key exhibits to another location.
Artist Stefan Jennings, pictured here, has been working with local youngsters on the banks of the river in recent days to create a huge willow sculpture, but vandals launched a night-time attack and caused so much damage that organisers have decided to move it away.
“The sculpture was unfortunately far too vulnerable on the banks of the River Brue, so it is now being built at a farm in West Huntspill,” one of the event’s organisers, Sarah Steadman, told Burnham-On-Sea.com on Monday (July 28th).
She added: “At the beginning of the Brue Festival it will be transported to its temporary location on the river banks and afterwards Sedgemoor District Council has kindly allowed us to place it in Apex Park for the public to enjoy for the rest of the summer.”
Local artist Judith Champion is among those supporting the River Brue Festival, which starts on Friday (August 1st).
She said she was “very disappointed” that the sculpture had been attacked. “It’s sad that a small minority of youngsters are spoiling the enjoyment of others. The intention was to have this sculpture built next to the river,” she told Burnham-On-Sea.com.
The River Brue estuary will be a hive of activity this Friday, Saturday and Sunday when the three day arts festival gets underway.
The event is being hailed as a ‘celebration of the creative arts in the Burnham area’ by its organisers, who include HABA (Highbridge and Burnham Artists), Somerset Arts Week and the Regeneration Partnership.
The festival will also include sculpture workshops, a mural making session, guided walks and family art workshops – as we recently previewed here.
The Highbridge History project will also put on an exhibition of photographs and memories in the town’s Community Hall on August 2nd and there will be an outdoor arts fayre on Burnham seafront on August 2nd and 3rd.
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Three-day River Brue Festical announced
