Projects / Ruperra Street Play Park
Ruperra Street Play Park
When I returned to work with Pill Primary on a later mural at Pill Park, the teachers told me they were still using the design workshop approach from our Ruperra Street project as part of their curriculum. The mural had been finished for some time, but the way we had worked together had carried on in the classroom.
Location: Ruperra Street Play Park, Pill, Newport
Client: Newport City Council
School partner: Pill Primary School, Year 6
My role: Design workshops, mural design and painting
From the children’s research to the mural — and back into the classroom ↓
Many backgrounds, one shared space
Newport City Council commissioned me to make a mural for Ruperra Street Play Park. I worked with Year 6 pupils at Pill Primary, exploring the different backgrounds represented in their school community: around 14 nationalities.
The children researched national flowers and animals and made artwork from what they found. Their ideas and drawings became the starting point for the design, with national flowers brought together in the finished mural.
My job was to turn those different contributions into a connected painting for the park. The workshop gave the pupils a way into the design through research and making, with their work feeding into a public artwork in their own neighbourhood.
Painting in the cold
I painted the mural in freezing conditions. Working with the children and then carrying their ideas through to the wall connected the classroom work with a place they knew outside school.
The workshop became part of the curriculum
On a later project with Pill Primary at Pill Park, the teachers told me they had taken the design workshop approach from Ruperra Street and were using it as part of their curriculum.
That stayed with me. The finished mural was one result; the school continuing to use the approach was another. It is a specific example of something from the project carrying on after my involvement had ended.
Returning to Pill Park
The later Pill Park project was another Newport City Council commission, this time to improve an unloved corner of the park. I worked with Pill Primary’s eco group, exploring the site and using the plants we found there as the starting point for the mural.
The two projects used different starting points — national flowers and cultural backgrounds at Ruperra Street, plants growing locally at Pill Park — and grew through a continuing relationship with the same school.
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