Going downtown in Kamsack next week visitors and residents will see newly-painted, colourful fire hydrants.
The 26 Grade 9 students in Kristen Doyle’s art class have taken on the project of giving the fire hydrants a new coat of paint and it was decided that rather than have them all be one colour, each one would be painted differently.
“We’ll probably be able to paint about 20 hydrants when we leave class to do it on May 13,” Doyle said last week. “We plan to do another 20 with a new group of students in September.”
In discussion for some time, the project got off the ground this year after Kev Sumner, recreation director, applied for and received a cultural outreach grant of $633 from Parkland Valley Sport, Recreation and Culture, which allowed him and Doyle to purchase the paint and associated tools to undertake the project.
“We’ve decided to let the students paint the hydrants however they choose,” Doyle said, adding that among the selected designs for various hydrants would reflect a range of images including Minions, trains, aliens, Duck Mountain and John Deere.
“We bought all the colours we could of an oil-based paint that is good for metal,” she said. “And we’ve mixed some colours as well.”
Doyle said the students will be starting with the hydrants on Queen Elizabeth Boulevard and main street; areas with high traffic.
Painting a community’s fire hydrants is not a new scheme, she said. They have been painted, for example, in Melville and Humboldt.
The idea is to take an ordinary object and draw attention to it,” she said. In addition, the Grade 9 art curriculum includes a section about taking action by using art for the greater good.
“We’re stoked about painting the hydrants next Friday,” she said. “We’re going to take lunch and have a good time. It’ll be like having a field trip in town.”
