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Full Colour Maindee
In 2024, more than 40 artists brought new work to walls, shopfronts and public spaces across Maindee. I helped recruit and support the artists, curated the programme and painted murals of my own. I relished both roles: making work myself and helping other artists find the right places for theirs.
Location: Maindee, Newport
Programme: Full Colour Maindee, 2024
Programme lead: Maindee Unlimited and partners
My role: Artist · artist recruitment · curation / creative coordination
Explore the artists, the walls and how it came together ↓
Commissioning context
Led by Maindee Unlimited with its partners, Full Colour Maindee formed part of a wider effort to strengthen the district through public-realm improvements, culture and community activity. The programme brought together commissioned murals, smaller interventions, participation and a mapped trail that encouraged people to move through Maindee on foot.
More than 40 artists were involved. Rather than imposing a single house style, the programme allowed very different visual languages to respond to particular walls, buildings and public spaces.
My role
I combined making my own public artwork with recruiting and supporting other participating artists. That meant working across the creative and practical sides of delivery: identifying artists with different strengths, helping match work to sites, maintaining dialogue around the wider programme, and contributing to an overall experience that felt varied without becoming disconnected.
As one of the participating artists, I painted the large swallows mural across the Square Pizza gable end and around the building’s corner on Chepstow Road. I also created work at the Triangle and other sites.
Outcomes
Visible change. New artwork across buildings and everyday surfaces changed the visual experience of the district and created recognisable landmarks.
A reason to explore. A mapped trail connected multiple sites and encouraged visitors to walk through the neighbourhood and discover unfamiliar corners.
Paid opportunities and practical experience. The programme created work for artists and opportunities to develop experience of large-scale public commissions alongside peers.
Participation and local conversation. Maindee Unlimited’s 2024–25 annual report records several hundred people attending the event, with many more following the art trail afterwards, and describes the project as a major talking point before and after the festival.
Different artists, different approaches
The strength of Full Colour Maindee was the range of individual voices. Artists retained authorship of their own work, while the programme created a shared context across the district.
Holding a varied programme together
The individual murals were deliberately different, but the programme still needed to feel like one thing. My role sat in that gap: making my own work while helping bring other artists, sites and partners into a shared framework. The result was not a house style, but a neighbourhood-wide programme in which strong individual work, artist development, participation and placemaking could reinforce one another.
Further project context: Full Colour Maindee sites and trail ↗ · Maindee District Centre commissioning context ↗ · Maindee Green Fingers masterplan ↗
Related project: Greening Maindee Gateway Garden
In 2025 I painted the mural for Greening Maindee Gateway Garden, bringing artwork into a newly planted community space. This was a separate commission from the 2024 Full Colour Maindee programme, but it demonstrates how mural work can connect with landscape, biodiversity and public-realm improvements.
View the Gateway Garden project ↗ · RHS Malvern: Greening Maindee Gateway Garden ↗
Gateway Garden — Maindee & RHS Malvern