Multicultural Mural

Brand new Big Artist, Natalie Gore has spent the last eight days working at St. Stephen's School in Wolverhampton producing this wonderful mural.


She spent the first two days planning and designing with the children, then battled through last week's rain to transfer it onto their once-bare wall.

Each panel takes a different country as its subject, featuring that country's flag, skyline, and animal.

We think she's done an incredible job. Have a peek below and see for yourself.

I'd like to be, under the sea.

It was an autumnal October eve when we began this mural project at the Evening Sleepover Club at Saxon Hill Special School, in Lichfield, Staffs, and last night when we finally finished it off.

We'd been asked to brighten up their dull, sterile bathroom with an undersea scene. Tim hit on a novel way to get the children (many with profound cerebral palsy) as involved as possible: we would have them paint long sheets of textured wallpaper with bright colours, then we would cut them into coral shapes and paste them onto a blue wall; we also recruited Lea Thomas, a local joiner, to cut out some chunky fish to be stuck amongst the coral reef.

First we painted the background.

Then spent a week of evening sessions getting real messy with the kids.

Several paint fights broke out over the course of these sessions. All, I must add, instigated by the Saxon Hill staff. This is typical of the good humour and joy that pervades the whole establishment, and makes it a pleasure to return again and again.

We pasted the coral onto the wall, the fish were decorated, then they were stuck onto the wall using velcro pads (this allows them to be moved and swapped around at the whim of the students).

The whole thing is bright, colourful, textured, and tactile. Perfect for the bathroom!

On a connected note, I'm running the Brighton Marathon to raise money for the charity Scope, who focus on people with cerebral palsy.

Any contribution would be greatly received: http://bit.ly/aJWNes

Murals from Sierra Leone

Springfield Junior School in Ipswich wanted four murals based on life in Sierra Leone. So after some consultation with the Head Teacher, and clear instructions to include a barracuda at any cost (he was a little obsessed!), I spent a weekend sketching these four mockups:

The school is twinned with a school in Sierra Leone. They are raising money for a well, and wanted something to reflect four aspects of life in the country: a shanty town, the school, a jungle replete with Sierra Leonean animals, and a tropical beach.

We worked with groups of four at a time. Slowly building up the background, midground, and foreground layers...

...before carefully working in the details.

In the end we worked with almost all of Y4, 5, and 6 over the five days. And I have to say that they did brilliantly.

The murals had a designated place in the Y6 corridor, so I got out the power tools and we stuck them up:

It's muraltastic!

Whitefriars Infant School in Northamptonshire needed their playground wall brightening up... so who did they call? The Big Art People of course.
We were asked to do a big bright mural along a minibeasts theme, so first we got the children to produce some designs, then took an element from each one to produce this mockup of the final piece:


Everyone was happy with the design so we packed up our paints and headed down to the school. We passed two very windy days painstakingly transferring the children's wonderful minibeasts onto the wall:


Everyone was really pleased with the final piece. It certainly brightens up the playground! And it's all the children's work.
Hopefully we'll be back at Whitefriars next school year to do another giant art project on the front of the school. Any ideas?!

Jim (Big Artist)