Bergh Apton Sculpture Trail Press Update

January 2005

What may well be Britain’s biggest outdoor Arts Festival will welcome more than eight thousand visitors to a small Norfolk village, just a few miles south of Norwich, when Bergh Apton runs its fourth Sculpture Trail in May and June of 2005. 

The Sculpture Trail has twin objectives: to connect the public and artists to each other in a rural idyll; and to support village projects and projects with Bergh Apton connections that include a small babies’ home in Uganda.

The festival will display the works of over sixty professional sculptors in twenty locations throughout the village that are, in the main, private gardens not normally open to the public.  Visitors may spend a day, r even two, in gardens connected by a network of nine miles of lanes and footpaths, and by a free ‘park and ride’ service. 

Maggie Smith, chairman of the organizers likened the project to a very large open-air art gallery accompanied by country sounds and birdsong.  She describes the philosophy of the project “we want people to have the opportunity to spend a day with works of art in a tranquil country setting – something of a rare experience in modern life.  Our visitors see how sculpture can work in an open air setting.  They can even buy a work of art to enhance their own garden and remind them of the day they spent in a unique village”.

The organizers, Bergh Apton Community Arts Trust (BACAT) meet the considerable costs and achieve a surplus through commissions on sales of art works and a modest entrance fee of £5 per head, with discounts for weekend passes & children.

BACAT confidently expects to match or better the results of the previous Sculpture Trail in 2002 that generated more than twenty five thousand pounds that was dispersed, in the main, to the parish church for its fabric fund, the village hall for its upkeep and a new children’s play area, to the village conservation trust that maintains a wildlife area in the village and to the voluntary-aided local school.

The most distant project that it hopes to provide with some funds is the Sanyu Babies Home in Kampala that has had a link with Bergh Apton since two village residents discovered the project during a visit to Uganda in 1997.  Support for the Home has included the purchase of a pick-up truck to carry out its work in and around Kampala.

This will be the fourth Trail in nine years that has been organized by BACAT whose patron is Sir Philip Dowson, the former President of the Royal Academy.