Scott point school - collaborative mural

At the end of 2023 I was approached by Scott Point School to facilitate the creation of a collaborative mural with all their students. Scott Point School is a full primary, which meant I needed to come up with a design that would enable the youngest to the oldest to participate in painting the final artwork. 
Our first step was to ask the students to bring in a taonga (special item) from home that represented something of their family or culture. The school has a diverse cultural make up, with not only Maori and Kiwi students, but families from across Asia, the Pasific islands, Africa and Latin American, Indian, Middle Eastern and European. 
It was interesting to see and inspect the taonga brought in from some of the students and a lot of these items were included in the final artwork design. 
The base for the design started with incorporating the school logo in the centre of the design and then using the flow of the waves from there to expand to the other cultures. 

As the percentages of the different cultures vary, we decided to use that as our point of combination onto the seperate panels - thus the 4 center panels represent the largest communities within the school and the four on the ends are a combination of the smaller communities. Watching and listenting to the children work on these was wonderful as they not only discovered the differences between cultures, but also the similarities. As they discussed these with each other they found better a understanding of each others cultural practises and traditions and shared freely about their own. Many would freely express their appreciation for each others cultures, as well as their shock about things that were completely opposite within various traditions. It was amazing to listen to them discuss and learn and just share openly about their own cultures and being eager to learn about others.

From left to right: European and UK panel, African and Latin American panel, Chinese panel, Maori and Kiwi panels in centre, other Asian panel, Pasifika island and Fijian panel, Indian and Middle East panel

The children assisted with every step of the process, from painting the white base coats (which they found extremely uninspiring) to the blending of the background hues and all the items making up the final design. Even the year 1 and 2's participated with creating some of the items using handprints. Have a closer look at the African hat, the Chinise lanterns, the Asian hats, Pasifika fans and pyramids. The main colours on those items have all been created with different coloured handprints from the year ones and twos. We also had some of the teachers come in to spend 30 minutes or an hour to make their mark painting some of the more detailed works and patterns. It was a joy to see the and hear the whole school community appreciate the artworks whenever they entered the room where we were working and to hear them talk about how far the work had come from the blank panels and every step in between.

All in all, I was very impressed with the participation of the school and the behaviour of the students. It was a pleasure working with Scott Point School and I look forward to seeing what other creative endeavours they come up with in the future.