Children at an Aire Valley school have been stamping their artistic mark on local history.

Pupils at Cottingley Village Primary School have been creating unique designs that will be seen for many years to come.

The children's work, a modern-day style of stained glass, will adorn the windows of a new church as part of the Cottingley Cornerstone Project.

The Cottingley Moor Road school has been at the heart of the scheme to give the village what backers are calling a new heart.

Cottingley Cornerstone Centre, a charity, will provide facilities including a function hall, IT rooms, GP surgery, nursery, elderly day care, youth rooms, respite care for disabled people, arts and crafts room and a church.

The project, which has been planned for three years, will also have 52 houses and apartments.

The budget is £8.5m and £3.9 million has been raised towards the centre, including £1 million from the Government-backed programme Futurebuilders England.

Prince Charles, who is taking an interest in the development, has made a donation from his private charity.

The pupils called on York-based artist Dan Savage to help with their designs.

He said: "The children are designing patterns of hands and feet and they are going to make these designs as contrasting and bold as possible so they can be integrated into the windows at Cottingley Cornerstone."

"There will be six windows and they are all going to be printed glass. The printing is going to be crushed glass that's fired into the glass once it's been printed."

He said the prominence and permanence of the glass made it a very special project for the pupils.

"These children are literally designing artwork that is probably going to outlive them. This artwork is so permament it's going to be there as long as the buildings and hopefully the building will be there for hundreds of years."

Deputy headteacher Pam Allen said the school had been involved with Cornerstone from the start.

"Right from before the inception of the project when Prince Charles showed his interest and came and it was decided to completely regenerate the centre of Cottingley we've had an arts day in school, inter-generational projects and competitions," she said.

"The children will be able to see their work in their own lifetimes and tell their children about it as they are brought up in Cottingley."

e-mail: jonathan.walton@bradford.newsquest.co.uk

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