A SPECTACULAR and colourful sculpture featuring scores of brightly decorated padlocks is turning heads in Blackwood.

At the heart of the town’s retail park, opposite the dragon brick circle and by the side of Asda, the Love Locks sculpture is the eye-catching result of a project launched in January, at the height of the winter lockdown.

Now Blackwood Miners’ Institute has teamed up with NONaffArt - a collective of professional visual artists, designers and health and wellbeing coaches based in South Wales - to celebrate the easing of restrictions by unveiling the finished result.

The Love Locks project was launched on January 25 - Dydd Santes Dwynwen, the Welsh equivalent of St Valentines Day.

Love lock project

Love lock project

Individuals and community groups were encouraged to send in decorated padlocks and 400 project packs were sent to community groups.

The project even went gone global with three padlocks sent from Arizona in the USA, from a woman wanting to celebrate a wedding anniversary.

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Tania Bryan, director of NONaffArt, said love locks are traditionally a symbol of love and commitment in ancient culture, a recognisable object that communities can relate to, as well as being a play on the word ‘lockdown’.

“It was an activity perfect for the community associate to the lockdowns and exactly what this area needed to lift its spirits, as there was an obvious decline in well being,” she said.

“This project gave the community something to look forward to and see develop through social media.

Love lock project

Love lock project

“Each lock is personal to the individual - whether they used it for an activity to cure boredom for an hour, or something much more meaningful, the locks were aimed to just be fun and maybe even spark a new interest in art.

“The sculpture now acts as memorial for the community, created by the community, but also commemorates that there is life after lockdown.”

The steel sculpture was designed and fabricated by NONaffArt and displays the padlocks in a design containing four hearts either side of a laser cut ‘tree of life’, cut by Laser Labs in Bridgend.

There is space too, for more padlocks to be hung by people who may have missed out on the initial project.