{"id":794844,"date":"2026-10-07T13:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T13:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/794844\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T13:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T13:16:11","slug":"coventry-woman-who-got-so-fed-up-of-dumped-rubbish-she-turned-it-into-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/794844\/","title":{"rendered":"Coventry woman who got so fed up of dumped rubbish she turned it into art"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman transformed fly-tipping near her home into ‘art’ in a bid to prompt her local council into action.<\/p>\n

Mary Courtney noticed rubbish accumulating in the alleyway connecting Broomfield Road and Kensington Road in Coventry<\/a>, on September 12.<\/p>\n

Initially, the waste consisted solely of a bag of soda bottles filled with urine, but further items, including a pushchair, a broken doll and a trolley, built up over the subsequent three weeks.<\/p>\n

Mary reported the problem to Coventry City Council<\/a> and raised her concerns with local representatives, yet the rubbish remained in place.<\/p>\n

Fed up with the lack of progress, she created a temporary art installation amongst the waste to draw attention to the issue, posting a photograph online and tagging a council member.<\/p>\n

Councillor Patricia Hetherton responded immediately and, by the next morning, the pile had been cleared.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Mary said: “Fly-tipping is such a depressing scourge- I was getting really frustrated that nothing was being done.<\/p>\n

“Especially since it’s a bio-hazard having urine there like that!”.<\/p>\n

“Ultimately I wanted to go through the proper, official routes, but when those didn’t work, I’m glad art could be the final nudge needed to make change.”<\/p>\n

Following her initial discovery of the urine bottles, Mary logged the issue on the FixMyStreet website but claimed little headway was made.<\/p>\n

Mary said: “I continued on what felt like this non-stop campaign to get this rubbish removed.<\/p>\n

“But I kept either not getting a response or being told that it wasn’t the council’s responsibility.”<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Mary shared photographs of the rubbish on her social media<\/a> on Wednesday (September 30), where someone in the comments recommended she create an art installation to highlight the problem.<\/p>\n

She said: “I woke up the next morning with an idea fresh in my head, having seen a broken doll added to the pile.<\/p>\n

“I found a manky piece of cardboard in my recycling and used paint sticks from the central library to write out this poem of despair.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

In a “fury of frustration”, Mary uploaded an image of her placard positioned beside the doll amongst the fly-tipped waste and tagged local councillor, Patricia Hetheron.<\/p>\n

Mary ventured down the alleyway the following morning while heading to the shops and was delighted to discover the pathway cleared of debris.<\/p>\n

She said: “Patricia Hetherton got in touch almost immediately after I posted the art installation on Facebook.<\/p>\n

“Then, the next morning, the rubbish was gone.<\/p>\n

“I was so happy to see the area clear again!”<\/p>\n

Get the latest Coventry headlines and breaking news straight to your inbox. Sign up to our free email newsletter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman transformed fly-tipping near her home into ‘art’ in a bid to prompt her local council into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[89282,1397,162049,90,56,54,55,17090],"class_list":["post-794844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-coventry-city-council","tag-environment","tag-fly-tipping","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-weird-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}