Author: Amy
In March, Ellie, Maddie and I completed a mural in one day. We really were not expecting to get it done so quickly, and had help lined up for the rest of the week! The creatures in the mural were designed by local children in one of our workshops. We had to create a new workshop for this type of project and used our previous experience in Sherborne to develop it. Ellie had a great time designing the PowerPoint and diligently writing up the session plan. Meanwhile, I was creating pitches for local doctors’ surgeries and hospitals, writing risk assessments, and managing our team.
The children loved the workshop! We asked them to work in teams to create creatures together. They received prompts from a hat at the start, ranging from ‘the future’ to ‘snowy mountain’. When they struggled to work together fairly, we would ask them all to come up with one of their favourite features from their individual sketches and monster-mash them into the group creature. Their different interpretations invited many interesting stories, including a jungle-slime-monster’s 100th birthday!
I then had the task of translating these images into designs we could paint with our primary colour palette, while keeping them as close to the original as possible. I had to honour those creative creatures! Once the design was finalised, we headed off to the Christchurch Medical Centre to start sketching it on the wall. The lovely staff kept our spirits up all day with compliments and questions as we worked. The team worked seamlessly together, contorting into twister-esque poses to work on virtually the same spot at the same time.
We were ecstatic to finish so quickly, and in a bit of disbelief! The previous mural Ellie and I had finished in three days, and we were trying to adhere to tight constraints. I am so pleased to have given local children the opportunity to make a mark on their community and bring some colour and joy to a GP surgery!
If you own a blank space in need of a creative mural, please get in touch at info@thestoryworks.org.
