Mural Painting - 1st meeting

After doing the Nairobi Mural painting Inter Cultural trip last year I was really looking forward to the painting the Interact mural as well. The mural is to be put up in elementary school once it is finished and gives students opportunity to work together and develop artistic skills as well as give the opportunity of creativity. 

This was the first mural painting meeting and we met in the art room to first of all come up with a design for the mural. Ms Taylor had chosen a poem called ’Where the Sidewalk Ends’, that described the divine nature of kids’ minds. This was the main source of our inspiration. I don’t take art classes in school but still find it very entertaining. This was a great opportunity for me to get a chance and do something creative and learn a little bit more. We chose one drawing that divided the rectangular mural in half. One side was dull and almost scary city and the other the happy fantasy world of a child’s mind. The link between the sides was a little road travelling away from industrialisation and conformity.. the good thing about this mural was that even though we chose one ’template’ everyone could add things to it. I contributed with two unicorns on the happy side for instance. However, as for most activities it is always important to take initiative as there are many people that want to make their deas part of the mural. 

Over all i actually feel like I got more out of this activity than I had hoped for. origninally I expected to merely paint certain areas a color that was already decided but in fact all of the students in hte group got a chance to really participate and but in their own opinions and contributions. Also, the fact that we all had to try and come up with an idea did put me out of my comfort zone as this not soe´mething I normally do and so am not fully secure with the task. I think that by doing the mural paintinga couple of more times I will definitly develop and especially start to feel more comfortabe in areas that might not fit me perfectly. As long as one can work together with others, most things usually work out fine. And of course, middle school will hopefully have a colorful mural to light up their shool days once we are done.