Coventry kids win community award for art project

An art project at the University of Warwick involving children from three city schools won an award at the Coventry Community Cohesion Awards 2012.

In February, pupils from The Westwood Academy, Charter Primary School and Cannon Park Primary School designed and painted artwork on to hoardings at the site of new student residence blocks on the University’s campus. The pupils were visited by local artist Jo Buffery as part of the Warwick Arts Centre Educational Programme. She taught them about the use of colour and the schoolchildren also spent a day carrying out research on campus, questioning Warwick students about student life. Ideas were then developed into a design based on their aspirations for the future and their interpretation of life as a student. The project, in partnership with Shepard Construction, saw Year 8 pupils from Westwood Academy mentor their younger contemporaries when on site.

Warwick Arts Centre Education Director, Brian Bishop said:

“We’re absolutely thrilled with this award. A very important aspect of all our arts education projects is about bringing young people together to make and share new works of art so to have a project recognised in the context of community cohesion confirms to us that we are offering young people something socially important as well as creatively engaging.”

Canon Park Primary School teacher Hilary Wilson added:

“It opened the kids’ eyes to the possibilities which are out there in front of them and taught them valuable life skills. It has also built excellent links between the school and the university.”

The award will be shown to the children who took part, and will then go on display in the Box Office at Warwick Arts Centre. To see more pictures of the project and of the award, click into the gallery on the right hand side of this page.

Funding and materials for the project was provided by the University and Shepard Construction. More information about the project can be found here.