The Fife Bench Project

This was a collaboration with my old friend William Warren, and was commissioned by Kingdom Housing Association working with Creative Scotland. The brief was: design, manufacture, and install eighteen public benches around the ancient kingdom of Fife. And involve the locals.

After a few trips up north to get the lie of the land, we settled on the idea of the bench as a colourful picnic rug 'whipped up by a gentle breeze from the Firth of Forth' as William put it. Of course this gave us the excuse to do what we really wanted at the outset, which was to make something Tartan.
I made a sketch, the locals approved (more or less), and we decided the 'blanket' needed to be made in metal. The breakthrough came when William devised a very clever way of perforating steel sheet to give the effect of a weave (or 'sett' as the sequence of repetition is called) which allowed the framework in a contrasting colour to show through. To get the best shape for comfort we made a mock-up in bendy-ply.

Unable to find a metal bench manufacturer in Fife, we came across a ventilation fabricator called Envirovent whose owner Eddie Syczynski was willing to make the benches. Soon we had a prototype for people to try out. We involved the various communities by inviting residents and schoolkids to choose colours for the 'tartan' of the bench in their locality. After powder-coating all eighteen benches were installed at sites around Fife by the council's Skills and Development Centre - an organisation which provides training opportunities for people wishing to develop their skills in the construction industry. Some benches have views of the Firth of Forth, another just has a view of a traffic roundabout, but all have been well received by the locals and there is now a Fife Bench Trail.

Many thanks must go to the wonderful Babs McCool (real name!) who drove us around all the sites in her open top Citroen and introduced us to the communities involved.