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Iron Gym project to link Medway heritage sites in new community exercise trail

Launch of project to link Medway heritage sites in exercise trail involving University students

An exciting project to create an exercise trail linking the University's Medway campus with some of the area's most popular heritage sites has been launched.

Organisers of the Iron Gym project have received a £17,000 grant from Arts Council England to develop the innovative initiative that will involve linking local heritage attractions such as the Historic Dockyard Chatham, Fort Amherst and the Royal Engineers Museum and Library in Gillingham with the University to form a series of exercise opportunities.

Each site would make use of existing features and relevant architectural salvage to form an installation or sculpture that could be used by the local community for exercise.

University students from the Centre for Sports Studies as well as the schools of Architecture and Arts are involved in the project, which is being led by Dr Ian Bride, of the School of Anthropology and Conservation.

He said: 'A previous project I was involved in identified the need for more activity sites on the University's Medway campus.'

'We then began looking at the idea of extending a trail of exercise sites around the Medway area, making use of the heritage of each location and involving the local community in planning for their own needs.'

Meetings are being held with many of Medway's heritage attractions to build up a mapped route and students are also busy creating a series of 3D maquette models to show how each installation might look.

It is hoped to exhibit a full-size prototype of one of the proposed installation concepts to exhibit during Medway's Fuse Festival in June.

Contact: pressoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 9:33am 1 February 2012