The people's meadow
true colours of spring bank
inspiration for the People's Meadow
At the start of the micro project opportunity I researched into the work that had already taken place with the True Colours Spring Bank and the piece of information that really stood out to me was the fact that the Collingwood Primary School has over the years dealt with 64 languages. I felt this was a celebration of multicultural living in our City and a nod to the success of the Spring Bank community. I knew the children of the Collingwood Primary would be the inspiration to find a way forward to develop a piece for the micro project that would enable them to be a major part of the artwork that I would design.
love
At the time I had been studying and painting wild flower meadows and could see how this could very easily relate to different cultures enjoying working, living and celebrating life within a community. I arranged to carry out workshops in the Collingwood Primary with yr5 and yr6 pupils, taking along a large painting of a wild flower meadow as a starting point for discussion; how wild seeds are transported naturally, how different flowers compliment each other, how different plants can live healthy in one environment. We then related this to a multicultural community and how differences in culture can enhance our lives and relationships.
We moved on to choosing words that the children felt described their environment and at the end of the workshop they all wrote one word to put into the post box.
LOVE was the most written word, FRIENDSHIP, COMMUNITY AND FREEDOM were also popular.
Keeping with the meadow theme I designed 4 panels using the wild Anthriscus Sylvestris (cow parsley) flower as this gave a strong stem for the word LOVE to be the flower top. LOVE was translated into 24 languages across the panels which ultimately depicts a meadow of multicultural harmony.
