Lancaster climate leader creates memorial to endangered species out of broken smartphones

His wife Alison Cahn, who retired at the same time, was pursuing a long-held dream of going to art school.

“I’d wanted to do a Foundation Diploma in Art & Design since talking to a friend’s daughter who was doing one,” said Alison, who had been taking art classes at Halton Mill, where she was operations manager.

"It sounded such fun, like messy play at primary school, having the opportunity to try out so many different techniques and media.”

Inspired by Alison’s enthusiasm, Kevin decided to go too.

And so, in September 2023, they joined nearly 200 18-year-olds at Manchester School of Art. Their first task was to work with eight other students to create a huge inflatable.

“I’d never had much confidence in my artistic ability before, having been told at school that I couldn’t do art,” said Kevin, “but by the end of the day we had created something spectacular.”

“It was a bit scary to begin with, but we had an amazing year: intense, challenging, liberating, and huge fun,” said Alison.

“I tried so many different things: sandblasting, welding, pottery, making ice sculptures and shadow puppets and exploring lots of different ways of printing.

"One of the highlights was creating huge protest banners for an auditorium at Factory International in Manchester, curated by famous set designer Es Devlin, who designed the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.”

“It was a real privilege to be on equal terms with so many talented young people,” said Kevin. “The other students were a bit curious about us to begin with but ended up just accepting us as fellow artists.”

For their final projects, which were exhibited at the art’s school’s end of year show, both Kevin and Alison chose an environmental theme.

Kevin collected broken mobile phones, sandblasting images of endangered species on them to create a ‘memorial graveyard’.

“It struck me that phones look a bit like gravestones – they are also symbolic of our modern consumer obsessions that are causing so much damage to life on the planet,” said Kevin.

Above his graveyard, Kevin placed cracked tablets, with colourful images of more endangered species, including humans, alongside some of the things that have caused this destruction.

Alison’s final project was a giant board game, highlighting the obstacles wild Lune salmon face on their 4,000-mile journey from their spawning grounds in the Cumbrian Hills to their feeding grounds in the North Atlantic and back.

“We live next to the River Lune in Halton, and I’ve been helping Kevin to monitor salmon on the Lune for many years,” said Alison. “I’ve seen salmon numbers decline dramatically and I wanted to find a way to represent this artistically that was also interactive.”

She used driftwood and other objects she found on the riverside, many from the days when Halton was an industrial hub.

Now the couple are hosting an exhibition of these works, along with other pieces of art they did during their Foundation course.

“I’d like to develop and expand my phones project to fill a whole room,” said Kevin. “If anyone has any old phones they no longer need, I would love to have them. They can drop them off at Halton Mill or contact me on [email protected].

The exhibition – When Kev and Ali went to Art School – is showing on the mezzanine at Halton Mill until mid-January during opening hours: 9am-9pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm at weekends. The building is closed to the public between Christmas and New Year.