Super-Curricular Art Commission for Year 9

Our talented Year 8 Art students had only just delivered on an internal ‘commission’ to decorate the school’s recent ‘WellFest’ event – they produced bright, beautiful images of planets in response to the ‘outer space’ brief they were given – when a real life creative brief from Elmbridge Borough Council landed on the Art department’s doorstep!

This time around, it was a job for our Year 9 talented artists to respond to. And they couldn’t wait to get their teeth into the project! The brief was for an artwork project for the Hersham Community Centre, who were looking to introduce two large canvases for their two therapy rooms. These rooms are used by therapists across a number of disciplines including counselling, reflexology, language learning groups, massage and small craft groups.

The Creative Brief asked our students to think of the following words to inspire their design ideas – mindful, colour, calm, safe space, all around the central word ‘community’. With this in mind, our boys were taken off time-table for a whole day last week to work on this exciting project.

Following initial discussions around ideas they may have and the practical elements of transferring their designs onto large canvases, the boys were able to use whatever medium they worked best with to experiment with their ideas.

The students were able to produce some lovely, bright designs for their client’s consideration, although a number of the boys were keen to continue with their ideas over the following days before the final submission deadline had to be met.

Suffice to say, our talented Year 9 artists got the opportunity to experience working first-hand on a ‘real life’ commission from a well-known, highly-respected organisation and this made the experience all the more exciting, genuine and authentic for them. We’d like to say a very big ‘thank you’ to our contact Emma Greenwood at Elmbridge Borough Council for inviting us to take part. In the meantime, we will be keeping our fingers crossed that one or two of our boys’ designs will be selected and reproduced onto the two huge canvases they have ready and waiting at the centre!

STOP PRESS:

The designs by Ayaan M 9SLE and George S 9CHR have just been chosen to be developed onto canvas over the next couple of weeks. We really hope that our client loves them!