Our Place In Space volunteers in North Down

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• Our Place in Space is an epic scale model of the solar system designed by artist and children’s author Oliver Jeffers, incorporates a 10km three-dimensional sculpture trail at Ulster Transport Museum and North Down Coastal Path from 17 September until 16 October 2022

• Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for North Down residents to join in major art project

Nerve Centre, producers of Our Place in Space, are seeking volunteers to take up a range of positions when the major new installation comes to the Ulster Transport Museum and the North Down Coastal Path this September.

Our Place in Space, part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, is an epic scale model of the solar system designed by artist and children’s author Oliver Jeffers, incorporating a 10km three-dimensional sculpture trail in Northern Ireland and Cambridge, an interactive AR app, and major learning and events programmes.

The Our Place in Space sculpture trail will open to the public at Ulster Transport Museum and North Down Coastal Path from 17 September until 16 October and is free and accessible to everyone.

Executive Producer at the Nerve Centre, David Lewis says: “We really want as many people as possible to become involved in Our Place in Space not just to enhance the experience for others but to have an unforgettable experience themselves. We have a variety of volunteering positions available across lots of different areas in each of the places where the Sculpture Trail will exhibit with commitment requiring as little as two hours a week.”

Volunteering positions include Local Legends to help welcome and inform visitors, Backpack Heroes to support school and community group tours of the interactive planetary experience, and Green Team to take on litter picks and clean-ups before and after the trail is installed.

From creating a star to writing a symphony for the universe, inventing a new form of transport, building a Minecraft planet or connecting with space watchers around the globe, Our Place in Space invites participants to consider how we might better share and protect our planet in future. It brings our solar system down to Earth and sends us soaring into the stars to find new perspectives and reconsider what it means to live life on Earth.

Our Place in Space has been designed by artist and children’s author Oliver Jeffers with support from leading astrophysicist Professor Stephen Smartt, and features music by award-winning sound artist Die Hexen. From April 2022, the trail will travel from Derry~Londonderry to Divis and the Black Mountain, Belfast and to the Ulster Transport Museum and North Down Coastal Path in Northern Ireland, as well as a riverside location in Cambridge.

The Our Place in Space app will be available on Apple and Android devices and will allow users across the world to take a walk through our solar system, experiencing the planets in augmented reality and considering 10,000 years of human history. Users will collect space souvenirs, including characters from the world of Oliver Jeffers, as well as launching a personalised star into space.

Oliver Jeffers says: “For centuries, we’ve defined ourselves by who we are and who we’re not. Which side we choose, on what ground we stand, who and what we fight for. A human story, that lives merely in human minds. But with distance comes perspective – and what happens to our perspective on everything when we look back at Earth from space? Our Place in Space is a playful experiment that asks: What is the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’? Which side are we on, and if we look back at ourselves from vastness of outer space – alone on our tiny planet, the only one that can harbour life – should there be any ‘sides’ at all?”