PROJECT PIGEON
Alex Lockett & Ian England
Project Pigeon is an art, curatorial and education project taking place between March 2009 and March 2010. After some years and many months of attending pigeon clubs in the midlands we have started our own loft on a piece of land in Birmingham.
We are holding Open Loft Days on Sundays between 11-3 between June and September 2009 when you can come and see the pigeons flying, being fed and talk pigeons.
Pictorial is an exhibition where artwork will be carried across the country by pigeons, there will be works by Lisa Cheung, Tom Dale. Lindsay Seers, Ole Hagen, Ming de Nasty, and Simon Woolham and possibly others, live opening 6.30pm Thursday 27th August
We are also running an education programme with an ISSP youth offending group. We will teach the young people how to look after animals, about geography, maths, history, biology, diet and communication.
Our loft at the Rea Garden, Digbeth, Birmingham.The planning permission finally came through and we started erecting our loft (you need planning permission to keep even just one pigeon even on your own land which is quite a long, expensive, and quite troublesome). Our loft is brightly coloured so that the pigeons will be able to recognise it (pigeons have amazing eye site- life vests are orange/ red because pigeons can see that colour very well and were taken on rescue missions), and we have taken inspiration from the lofts we have seen.
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Our first arrivals,March 2009, this is a very exciting moment for us. Six or seven of the guys at Aston & District flying club have donated us about 20 birds.
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Me and a grizzle pigeon, learning to catch and hold the pigeons correctly has taken a little while!
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Ian showing the new squeakers how and where to drink. The pigeons have just been parted from their parents and so need to learn to drink and eat by themselves
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Bath time! The pigeons love having a bath and do so about twice a week |
Our pigeons are staring to fly a bit now (May 2009)- mostly darting around in the sky, they look like they are about to fly into each other and the buildings around
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You can see the flight feathers on this one |
This is our mealy pigeon have a fly. The next stage is for them to start circling in a group |
Pigeons sitting on the wall |
Hand feeding the birds. This is a good way of letting the pigeons know that you feed them and a fun way of interacting with them |
The pigeons sitting ontheir loft roof |
Sitting around the loft! They are spending time getting familier with their surroundings, somtimes they get frightend by planes, loud noises, other birds but they are learning about what poses a real threat and what doesn't |
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