A YORK artist displayed her work in a York Minster summer exhibition as part of a community art project.

Penny Phillips, a ceramics tutor at St Peter’s School in York invited families, children, and schools across both the city and further afield to participate in her Kibo Cranes exhibition, which consisted of colourful cranes made from origami paper, and displayed on the central crossing at York Minster.

The exhibition, which ran over the summer, from April 30- July 22, was inspired by the 400 year old Japanese tradition of creating paper cranes as a sign of ‘kibo’ – meaning hope – and symbolising health.

Penny said: “In Japan, cranes symbolise health and a thousand years of long life, and a thousand origami paper cranes are often given to a person who is ill, to wish for their recovery.

“The pandemic has made the last year difficult in all sorts of ways and we hope this exhibition will encourage everyone but particularly children to share their thoughts and feelings about the last year and their hopes for the future.”

Penny was inspired by this tradition, and so she encouraged the children who participated to create the cranes to express their thoughts and feelings about the last 18 months of the pandemic.

They drew on their cranes, and expressed their thoughts and wrote wishes, messages, poems, or just simply wrote their names or kept them blank, and submitted their creations for the exhibition on June 28.

The cranes were created out of the traditional origami paper that is used in Japan, but were also made out of ordinary coloured or plain paper, newspaper, and other materials that keep their shape when folded.