Fresh Creative Co. were commissioned by Dwr y Felin Comprehensive School to run a series of eight workshops for their students for a well-being day they were having.
The day would consist of 8 sessions, each lasting 45 minutes. We ran these sessions alongside other providers who ran their own sessions on all sorts of activities, which the students rotated through our the course of the day. We were asked to produce four 8ft by 4ft boards which would then be displayed around the school.
PROCESS
This was a tough challenge for us as 45 minutes isn’t really a very long time to teach graffiti, especially when each group had between twenty and thirty students, all of whom would have to be working on the same 8ft by 4ft board. Just to ensure that everyone managed to have a go with the cans would require some careful planning on our part.
We started the day off with the first group by holding a discussion about the day. The day had a well-being theme so we talked about what that meant to them and generated a list of words that would be used to form the designs for the individual pieces. From a large list and some interesting discussion the words we settled on for the boards were ‘Health’, ‘Goals’, ‘Grow’ and ‘Well-being’. It was felt amongst the group that these words represented the theme well. The importance of living a healthy lifestyle, both physically and mentally.The importance of setting goals and working to achieve them. Personal growth and the ability to improve yourself as a human being, and lastly how those things can lead to happiness and ultimately a sense and state of overall wellbeing. We also gave a brief lesson on how letterforms were created in the graffiti style.
Following this discussion, we headed outside and began the process of painting the boards. As we had four boards to paint and eight groups to paint them with it was important that we kept on a tight schedule of painting one board every two sessions. The process was to emulsion the boards black and then mark up a sketch outline on the board, during which a brief lesson on how to hold and use the spray can was given.
Next a colour scheme was chosen and the students helped to fill in the letters in small groups, rotating round to ensure that the whole class got to make their mark on the board. This process would take us about half way through the piece by the end of the session meaning that the next group would then have the task of finishing off the boards during the next. Again we’d start with a brief lesson on can control and how graffiti is painted before the students filled in the rest of the piece. It was then outlined and had highlights and a glow added to make the letters really stand out. This two session process was repeated four times throughout the day resulting in the production of four individual 8ft by 4ft letter pieces which were left with the school to display in their corridors.
FINISHED PIECES
Fresh Creative Co. had a really great time helping the students at Dwr y Felin Comprehensive School paint these pieces. Below are the finished results. The day was a real success with some great boards produced by the students, several of whom commented to us that they had enjoyed our session on the day. Thanks for having us and we hope to come back soon!
