Victor Dahdaleh Donates to Hugh Myddelton Primary School Via His Charitable Foundation

By Islington Tribune, PRNE
Sunday, July 24, 2011

LONDON, July 25, 2011 -

 

There was some fishy business going on at Hugh Myddelton Primary School in Clerkenwell with the recent unveiling of a sculpture created by the school’s children along with resident artists from the Bow Arts Trust.

New head teacher Andy Turner wanted to make a splash with the opening of the new building in Myddelton Street, so when he received a cash gift from the Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Charitable Foundation and Canadian investment bank TD Securities, he decided that something creative was the way forward.

The Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Charitable Foundation was founded by international businessman and active philanthropist Victor Dahdaleh. The Foundation’s activities are focused chiefly on education and medicine, granting scholarships to disadvantaged students at several universities and supporting causes such as cancer research and the Heart and Lung Foundation. Victor Dahdaleh is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics, and has been a governor since 1995.

Head teacher Andy Turner commissioned Bow Arts Trust, an educational charity based in Bow, to work with all 420 children, as well as teachers, to design an arresting new entrance to the school. After many experiments they came up with a giant mobile of fish and eels.

The link, he said, was the New River - a canal opened in 1631 to supply drinking water from the River Lee. It was funded by Sir Hugh Myddelton and legend has it that because there were no filter systems fish and eels would find themselves in people’s sinks.

“Many of the schools who receive this kind of money build computer rooms but we wanted to do something creative,” Mr Turner said. “We had a new building and it was a sign of the rebirth of the school. We wanted an end product and a process the children would understand.”

He added that pupils had to research the project by visiting the National Portrait Gallery and the Wellcome Trust, where they saw the giant Bleigiessen sculpture by Thomas Heatherwick

Artists Corinne Felgate and Nicolas Deshayes designed the final sculpture, called A New River’s End.

Mr Turner thanked the Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Charitable Foundation and TD Securities for their cash gift.

Contact: info at tdsecurities.com

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