St Luke’s CE Academy is proud to present their school mural in memory of SUAT CEO, Keith Hollins. St Luke’s felt that it would be wonderful to make a mural in memory of Keith as an amazing CEO, supported by Year 5 pupils who are currently involved in their art unit relating to Banksy. Staff and pupils at the Academy felt that this project was a perfect opportunity to remember Keith and achieve their learning outcomes.
After discussing themes and trends, including how proud Keith was of Stoke on Trent, and how he loved fishing, Year 5 wanted to incorporate water and symbols / pictures / phrases around this.
Local Graffiti Artist, Ethan Lemon, was commissioned to help the pupils of St Luke’s to create their mural. Year 5 were very creative and generated lots of ideas and made a list of everything they associated with Stoke. They also considered Ethan’s work to date, to gain inspiration!
The class and teaching staff wanted to include aspects of their curriculum such as Josiah Wedgwood, Clarice Cliff and canals in the mural, too. Once they had created their list, pupils used their sketch books to experiment and explore different designs for these ideas of what they could incorporate into the mural. The children demonstrated great skills within their artwork!
The designs were then collated, and the most common desired aspects were brought into one draft design, and children picked the colours that they thought would look best within the artwork. The colours and designs were then turned into a final draft which was sent this to Ethan, who was really happy with the artwork that St Luke’s had worked hard to produce. Ethan visited school and the children had the opportunity to help create the wall and watch him work, as a professional artist, too.
Year 5’s team of pupils and teaching staff feel extremely lucky to have had the opportunity, not only to work with a professional graffiti artist but also to be a part of the very important project, to remember Keith, whose name is featured at the centre of the mural.
Pupils said:
“My favourite part was being able to spray paint the wall; I feel it was a brilliant opportunity to have a chance to try something I have never done before!”
” I loved how everywhere has colour! I think it was a really nice thing to do as a school to remember our CEO.”
” Watching Ethan was so amazing! I have never seen someone do something like it.”
Well done to the team at St Luke’s for creating such a wonderful and meaningful piece of art!
