Manchester is to get its very own Angel of the North – made entirely from recycled plastic bottles

Manchester will soon be getting its very own Angel of the North – made up of around 25,000 recycled plastic water bottles.

Once completed, she will recline on the undulating grass across the southside of Angel Meadow park from November until the end of the year.

Local schoolchildren and New Mount Street-based charity Moodswings are this month undertaking a series of litter-picking afternoons in order to collect the materials needed for the art project.

They’ll then be given the opportunity to colour the individual bottles with paints donated by HMG Paints at free art workshops held in schools local to the area.

A real community art project, once all the materials have been collected and painted they’ll be sent to local artist Liam Hopkins and his team at Lazerian design studio, who will then fashion the discarded, recycled litter into a 32.5m x 26.5m metre Angel sculpture.

And at over 100ft tall, she is sure to tower over Newcastle’s iconic Angel of the North – which is itself 20 metres high with a wingspan of 54m.

Liam and his team at Lazerian anticipate that Angel will take three weeks to create through a combination of traditional handcraft techniques with computer-based modelling and pattern cuttings.

“It is a true community effort bringing together the base materials through the
local schools, the paint manufacturer and the charity to combine resources to create a thing of beauty,” said Liam.

“As an artist I find strength and beauty in the lightest and most ubiquitous of materials and plastic bottles are exactly the sort of products that we want to work with in this multi-dimensional design.”

To make sure they pick enough for the sculpture, Moodswings’ charity team are putting a call out to volunteers and service users to help with their litter picks at the park. These will run from 10am-1pm each Saturday in October, with volunteers also needed to also sort the bottles collected.

Donations of plastic bottles can also be deposited at the reception of the Co-operative Group at One Angel Square, adjacent to Angel Meadow Park.