Return of the St. Ives Sandcastle Competition

This years St. Ives September Festival kicked off with the return of the St. Ives Sandcastle Competition. Organised by RIBA Cornwall and Poynton Bradbury Architects, it was great to see the competition back up and running again.

This year the weather forecast aligned to provide amazing sunny conditions for family and friends to participate in the hotly contested categories on Saturday morning. As you would expect from those who both live and visit St. Ives, the creativity on display through the art of sand sculpting was fantastic!

The under-11’s category was a great opportunity to offer and encourage the space for children to explore and develop their creativity and artistic skills. A range of sea creatures, rainbows, vehicles and wave sculptures were on show.

The Family & Friends category was inundated with entries. Again the creativity on display was brilliant and this coupled with ambition structural design meant impressive submissions were on display for the judges to survey and for watchers by to appreciate.

This year’s judges were Johnnie Wells – Mayor of St. Ives and Chris Turner – Chair of RIBA Cornwall & Director of Poynton Bradbury Architects. After much deliberation in the midday sun, the judges were able to come to their decisions and award prizes in each category.

The consensus was that the event had been a great success and thank you to all those involved. Thank you to:

- The St. Ives September Festival for promoting the event

- Paul Symons and the Porthminster team for hosting and providing prizes for the Under 11’s category

- Tesco St. Ives for providing the prizes for the Family & Friends category

- Johnnie Wells for his Mayoral judging of the all of the sandcastle sculptures on display

RIBA Cornwall and Poynton Bradbury Architects look forward to building on this years success to expand the competition further next September. Watch this space!