Newport School by Coco Lom in London

I was commissioned by Newport Primary School in Leyton, east London, to create a 30-foot x 9-foot mural in their playground. I worked with the school's Year 4 pupils (aged 8) who helped me design the mural through a series of creative workshops which I led over two days. We shared ideas about how best to represent the school’s core values of respect, aspiration, care, integrity, creativity and being community-minded. I challenged the pupils to think about what these values might look like through the use of colours, shapes and patterns. ​We also used the school as inspiration for the mural, searching for different shapes and patterns we could see around us. From the repeated rectangles of their classroom windows to the stripey shadows of their playground fencing, we searched for shapes big and small, high and low. We used these as drawing inspiration and documented them through big chalk drawings on their playground floor. The children's workshop creations helped me develop the final design for the mural, which then took me eight days to paint. ​Encouraging the arts and creativity in young people is so important and it was amazing to share the development and design process with the children at Newport School. I'm so happy to have opened up a new way of seeing and creating for these young, curious minds.