School Mural for Environmental Awareness
Secondary students in Gosport co-created murals with a local artist to highlight environmental issues and reduce littering within the school.
Students from Bridgemary School enjoyed the sense of purpose and working at scale when they co-created a mural with local artist Al Warner. The aim was to highlight environmental issues and reduce littering within an area of the school, by featuring celebrity environmental campaigners such as Greta Thunberg, Hamza Yassin and David Attenborough.
They developed curriculum work by painting in the style of Julian Opie, developing their skills by working in a different medium to usual – gouache – and on a much larger scale than they had done before. As well as learning how to paint with gouache, they also peer-mentored other students to use this medium. The students also responded well to painting upright, rather than flat on a desk – something staff said they would incorporate into future teaching practice, using easels more.
“We don’t usually do paintings on that scale. It was good to use different gradients and work big” - Bridgemary School Pupil
The students are hopeful that the mural will brighten a dark corner of the playground and get the anti-littering message across.
“Hopefully [the mural] will stop littering, because there’s an awful lot of litter where it’s going.” - Bridgemary School Pupil
I’m going to tell my friends: ‘That’s my work and I’ve put my heart and soul into that, so you’d better respect it!’
