Children create giant mural to shine a light on their school and city
“The children were amazing and in the workshop you could really see their thoughts and ideas coming together”
Castletown Primary School children are bursting with pride after creating a giant 12 metre by 2.3 metre mural showcasing both their school’s values and the city of Sunderland.
At the end of the summer term, the school invested in a new storage unit to provide a space to store equipment.
Located on the playing field, pupils and staff at the school decided to make use of the unit to create a mural to represent both their values and some of the city’s most iconic landmarks.
Year 5 teacher, and curriculum lead in Art, Michelle Dalzel, said: “We invited local artist Gemma Lynas into the school and after an assembly, the children went off into groups to create design ideas of what they would like to see included in the mural.
“Shine is a word we use often in school and so the children wanted to incorporate that into the design as well as some of our core values. The children wanted to include helping hands, to represent the importance of teamwork and working together, as well as hearts to represent love and being caring.
“We also included lots of song notes as we are a school which loves to sing. We obviously had to include red and white stripes in the design in recognition of the football club.”
The design also incorporates some of the city’s most famous landmarks and features, including Roker lighthouse, the Spire Bridge, Wearmouth Bridge, Empire Theatre, and our numerous beaches.
Mrs Dalzel added: “All our different classrooms are named after famous city landmarks, and so the children wanted to ensure these were included in the design.”
Alice Carr, 10, worked on designing the ‘S’.
She said: “I came up with the idea and design for the lighthouse as I wanted to show the beach and pier and the lighthouse shines its light to help keep people safe.”
Sienna Barry, 10, said: “I also worked on the ‘S’ part of the design and the bees, which represent teamwork and working together. I think the mural really represents our school.”
Everley Forster added: “I worked on the hands which represent teamwork and peace. I would like to be an artist one day.”
Using the children’s ideas and designs, Gemma merged then all together to create the final design, which she spent the school summer holidays bringing to life on the storage unit in time for the children’s return.
She said: “The children were amazing and in the workshop you could really see their thoughts and ideas coming together. I went home with a pile of ideas. It was beautiful to look through them, and a lot of common themes came through, which were incorporated into the final design.
“It took about four or five weeks to pull everything together, but it was a real pleasure working with all the children.”
The final design certainly seems to have the approval of the pupils.
Luna Carr, 10, said: “The mural looks really good and I found taking part in the project really inspirational. It definitely represents us as a school.”
Oliver Nelson, 9, added: “I really enjoyed working with Gemma and I’m proud of the mural.