Insurance Corporation have a long standing relationship with The Optimists Club and their hugely successful efforts at the Jersey Battle of Flowers. We’re delighted to continue our sponsorship, and recently caught up with team member Steve Bouchard…
The Optimists float for this year is called “In Flanders Fields” and is a commemoration to the centenary of the end of the first world war. It features war horses, trenches, a cascade of poppies and a 16ft statue of a tommy soldier!
Its very emotional and a true tribute to all those who gave their life during that conflict. We have been working closely with the Royal British Legion and the float has had their full support from its early design stages.
The float will be very different from anything ever seen in Battle of Flowers before, we have decided to produce the float as a tableaux depicting a scene during the battle with nearly all 15 people on it in a static position.
This years float is expected to reach the £23,000 mark to produce and without the help and support of Insurance Corporation it would be impossible for us to even think about taking on such a venture. The flowers alone are costing in the region of £15,000 this year! It would be impossible to calculate the actual man hours that have gone into construction, the tommy statue took everyday for some 6 weeks and the full size horses have taken 4 weeks each just to hairstyle. So when you add the flowering during the last week and the number of people involved you are talking thousands of hours. We have a team of around 20 members putting the float construction together but that swells to about 60 during the flowering process in battle week.
The 2018 Battle of Flowers is on Thursday 9th August with the moonlight parade the following evening…
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