Painting With The Kids
Collaborative Painting Projects with Childrens' Groups
1. West Lavington Youth Club, Wiltshire
A totally different kind of mural project for a change - one where I didn't have to do all the work! 😃 (I could get used to this 😉 )
This mural was designed AND painted by the children from the West Lavington Youth Group - with a little help from me.
The design came out of conversations and workshops at the youth club, specifically about the kids' experiences during covid and how they feel now that lockdown is over and things are a bit more back to normal. (Oh, and also about watermelons. Apparently 🍉 🙂 )
26 different youngsters aged 11-15 worked on this wall in groups of 6 and 7, over four 3-hour sessions across two days. They worked incredibly hard and with genuine enthusiasm - and I hope they are proud of the end result, they should be! The children did most of the work themselves, I just sketched it up for them, did a bit of tidying up and finessing here and there, helped them get to grips with using spray cans and brush painting on an uneven surface, fetched the right colours for them, painted the up high bits that the smaller kids couldn't reach, and the trickier bits like the footballer's hands, etc etc.
The wall before, and some of the kids' original design work that fed into the final piece:
It was a big old wall - here for scale are myself, and Dave, the youth club leader/project sponsor with his very cute dog:
And here are some close ups of the work - the kids really did an amazing job!
And finally, I've been given permission to share this timelapse video of the youngsters all hard at work - look at them go! :
2. Stratton Festival, Swindon
This was a fun one - as part of the busy Stratton Festival, on a glorious summer's day, I did a bit of a live painting demo - and also invited the attending children to each paint one of the dragon's scales. It was very popular, we had a queue!
3. Potterne Youth Club, Wiltshire
A full-on three day paint job across two walls. I painted the background on my own for the first two days, and then on the Sunday, the children came along and painted their own additions to the main wall - critters and toadstools and flowers, etc. They worked so hard and did a great job!
Apologies for the glut of photos, but I wanted to make sure that I included all the kids' paintings.
Main wall, around the corner, and side wall:
Before. and a couple of Work In Progress pics:
A close up of that lettering on the side wall - because it was hard work to get it that neat on rough brick, and I'm blooming proud of it!! And the usual "Me For Scale" photo:
Some of the children - and parents too - hard at work (shared with permission):
And finally - all the amazing paintings that the children added to the wall:
