Eric and Albert's toy dragon competition with Ysgol Llanfechain
At the beginning of last summer the team at Eric and Albert’s toy company near Llanfyllin, invited all the pupils of Ysgol LLanfechain to design a very special School Dragon to be made in their toy workshop. The winning design/s were then to be the special edition Llanfechain school dragon to then be sold from via their webshop to customers worldwide to fundraise money for the school.
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The children were asked to design/ colour/ decorate them whilst considering some of the following things: Nature, Looking after our world / sustainability and Wales/home. The results were absolutely beautiful and the team at Eric and Albert’s were unable to choose just one winner so instead chose four! The winning designers and their designs were:
· Mali (age 6)– Draig Enfys/ rainbow Dragon
· Nathan (age 9)– Draig Eryri/ Snowdon Dragon
· Florence (age 9)– Draig Natur/ Nature Dragon
· Ember (age 9) – Draig Aur/ Golden Dragon
The winners were announced in September and were presented with their own version of their design to keep as a prize. Twenty of each dragon were made and they went live that evening on the webshop and almost entirely sold out within just a couple of hours raising £750 for the school.
A second batch of these dragons will be on sale on the Eric and Albert website mid May for a second fundraising effort.
The Eric and Albert customers absolutely loved the fundraising scheme and were blown away with children’s designs. The children’s dragons flew out to China, Japan, Australia, USA, Europe as well as the UK. Afterwards the children got to watch a video at school of the ‘behind the scenes’ process right from the design, to the woodwork and hand painting - through to the selling online, packing and sending processes.
It gave the children a chance to witness and experience traditional crafting methods as well as exploring their own creativity whilst seeing the benefits of fundraising for the school.
Rebecca and Martin the founders of Eric and Albert, described the whole experience as the most heart warming and rewarding project.
"The children were so inspiring with their creativity and dedication to the project, it was a privilege to work with them and we were so proud to see the designs sell to customers worldwide".
They hope to be able to offer other local community engagement events and school initiatives to encourage traditional crafting in the near future.
