Making Crewe community Arts trail project
I had an absolutely wonderful experience spending time with talented young people in Crewe and I am honoured to of been asked to take part of the Making Crewe Art trail which will be launched early 2025. My task was to work with the local youth community to discuss how they invisioned Crewe to be what they wanted, create some magical Art and then for me to use their design to inspire a huge mural which I would then paint.
I got to work with 5 groups within the community including YMCA, Cheshire College South and West Btec and A-Level, Visyon Creative Connections programme at the Lyceum Theatre, The Youth Justice Team and Cheshire Buddies. In our workshops we chatted about what growing up in Crewe means to them and their vision of a better brighter area. I asked them to think about this as we worked on my Peace Pattern template and as they created we wanted to channel these thoughts through their designs. I also asked them to think of a word which they thought was inspiring and represented the future of Crewe, these words became the titles of their designs and I would also use these in the final design. After they had followed the peace pattern process they collaged and coloured in their designs resulting in about 100 stunning colourful Artworks!
It was then my job to look through all their designs and choose 8 to be included in a mural design for the Old Chronicle building, which will also be the start of the new town centre Art trail.
There were so many beautiful designs it was really had to choose! So I decided with all the remaining designs I would draw them digitally and create a colouring book for them to keep including all their works.
The 8 Art works I chose were by Alan, Lexie, Katia, Evie, Lysander, Hayden, Alex and Layton. Here they are redrawn digitally below.
Here is the final design including the 8 chosen designs.
Then it was time to draw the design to scale, create the word stencils, pick the mural colours and order our supplies! My favourite part… picking my scissor lift that will enable me to zoom up and down the 10 metre high wall!
I was very lucky to have 3 fabulous assistants during the installation. Vicky who is a logistical whizz who braved the freezing rainy weather me. Then Siobhan who is a painting legend and Brough some sun with her from her holidays and then lastly at the end our Martin who single handedly built the best scaffolding tower ever! dream team!
I also enjoyed travelling in the train each morning too even though it was a 5am start. I got to watch the beautiful sunrise most mornings.
During the install I also made a lovely friend called Glendaline who lived in the same block as the building I was painting. She was so funny and charming and made us all laugh and smile through the whole install! What a legend!
Now the mural is painted I have a few weeks to draw the rest of the designs and create the fabulous colouring book for everyone involved!
Will add a pic soon!