North Road Primary School by Molly Hawkins in Bristol

North Road Community Primary School in Engine Common near Yate, South Gloucestershire commissioned visual artist and designer Molly Hawkins to create a new permanent outdoor artwork for the school building and playground. The commission was funded by Cotswold Homes as part of the planning obligations for their nearby housing development, The Grove. Suzanne Heath was appointed by Cotswold Homes as curator and project manager, overseeing the project from inception through to delivery. This project was conceived as an ‘off site’ project, given the wider opportunity identified at the school to create a project with real community impact and local engagement. Molly was appointed in April 2022 and developed her designs over the spring and summer through visits to the school and a series of badgemaking and printmaking and collage workshops she held for all of the school’s pupils aged 4 – 11 as part of her initial ‘artist residency’ phase. The imagery produced by the children during these workshops, together with information gathered during Molly’s site visits and attendance at School Council meetings, informed her final design proposal. The colour palette of the artwork references the school’s branding and uniform colours (purple and green) and the motifs indirectly reference the architecture of the historic school building, elements of the natural world surrounding the school and the school’s passion for sports, singing and dancing. The mural design is a celebration of the unique, joyful, nurturing and supportive atmosphere at North Road Primary School and intends to capture some of its energy, and reflect the school’s North Road values: Respect, Positivity, Perseverance, Ambition, Pride and Responsibility. The gable end wall site located in the school playground was chosen through discussion with the school, to replace a pre-existing mural there that had fallen into disrepair. In addition to funding the new artwork, and to ensure the longevity of the new artwork, Cotswold Homes also funded the preparatory work of the wall – removing the old mural, patching and re-rendering the wall. The wall mural was painted on site by Molly and her team during the 2022 summer holidays, with the accompanying floor-based design element being installed by Uni-Play in September 2022. As well as the wall mural, the artist removed the two basketball hoops previously on the wall, resprayed them and reconditioned the backboard, adding coloured vinyl decals and replacing the hoop nets and climbing holds to match in with the wall mural colours and design. The school council gave feedback that they wanted to keep both hoops, but move them to one side of the wall, so that other children could be ‘bouldering’ on the climbing holds, without getting hit on the head by basketballs.