Through the first term and a bit of 2024 I have had the pleasure of working with Boulcott School on a large mural project with the students. This project was incredibly unique in that we were investigating and featuring an important historical event in the New Zealand land wars ‘The Boulcott Farm Massacre.’ As you can imagine this is a tricky piece of artwork that involves being incredibly diligent with historical sources of information, sensitivity to all parties involved and helping the students create their own feelings and ideas about what accrued.

The leader of this project was Brigit Scahill (teacher at Boulcott School). She based the project around the following whakataukī.

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua. 

I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past. 

This whakataukī speaks to the past, present, and future being woven together. 

We spent weeks researching the history of the Boulcott area. The students talked to their families about their own family history and what bought them to Boulcott whether it be recent or generations ago. We had a local expert of ‘The Boulcott Farm War’ Tui Lewis visit and share her knowledge. Tui is the Hutt City deputy mayor and is of Ngāi Tai​ and Ngāti Manu descent, she is currently working on a project to address the accuracy of the war event memorial and acknowledge Māori.

We created a visual timeline of every major event from the prehistoric age to now and narrowed it down to the meaningful parts to the students. This timeline included the students families arrival to the area and stories. We identified a common theme in people coming to New Zealand to live in that they were all searching for a better life for their families.

We then had the tricky job of figuring out what this history means to us today and how it has shaped Boulcott School culture. We managed to tie the schools ‘CHEER’ values to the events.

This is what we came up with.

Today at Boulcott School…

We aspire to be Confident because on the 16th May in 1846 200 Maori bravely marched through the night to Boulcott farm in an attempt to resolve the injustices of land agreements. They had confidence in their rights to the land they are connected to, their home.

We value Honesty because through our ancestors' suffering and conflict during the New Zealand land wars we have learnt to value communication and courageous conversations.

We strive for Excellence because 23 Chinese families who had immigrated to New Zealand for the Gold Rush were resourceful when they didn't strike gold and turned the Hutt Valley into the largest Chinese market gardens in the country to feed our growing population.

We look forward with Enthusiasm because in 1944 the Lower Hutt hospital opened and started caring for the growing communities health needs. The hospital has also provided jobs for many New Zealanders and immigrants.

We have the utmost Respect for our river Te Awa Kairangi which has been the source of water, food and transportation for many generations. We care for it to ensure a fertile future of this land.

In the finished mural you will see a night scene of two figures faces, one representing the Maori the other a British soldier. Under the moonlight they look each other in the eye with sadness and empathy. Behind them a large Totara tree which still stands in the school grounds. Running around them is the Te Awa Kairangi with our two Wellington taniwha Ngake and Whātaitai which were designed by a student. A Chinese market gardener and a signing featuring the whakataukī sit on the left. A historic hospital scene with an airplane out the window sits on the right.

The mural was painted predominantly by the students. Like a large colouring sheet they carefully fulled each section with paint. I then touched up and outlined everything to finish the mural.

This was such a wonderful process and project to be part of. One that I have to pinch myself as I can;’t believe I get to do this as my job!

““AMY LISTENED CLOSELY TO OUR BRIEF AND WAS THOROUGHLY PREPARED AND RESEARCHED. THE MURAL IS ONE WHICH REFLECTS OUR DIVERSE SCHOOL COMMUNITY WHILE ALSO RECOGNISING OUR LOCAL HISTORY. I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND AMY TO WORK ON ANY MURAL PROJECT AND LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING MORE OF HER WORK AT BOULCOTT SCHOOL.”

”

— Brigit Scahill, Boulcott School

As you know I love to draw and paint fun, bright, loveable characters many based on our native birds here in New Zealand. Each year St Joseph’s School in Upper Hutt welcomes groups of international students into the school to join their classes and experience school life here. I was asked to run an art class with two groups from China. These students knew very little if any English so art was the perfect activity to connect with them. These sessions were two hours long.

I drew some of my characters step by step on the whiteboard and the students followed along. they then created some of their own. Their ideas were amazing, a kiwi jumping on a trampoline, fast food worker penguins and a tuatara who had worked out too much at the gym. What I was blown away with it how they were able to draw along with me so confidently, some of their drawings looked better than mine!

They then drew their favourite design onto a wooden shape and coloured it with Posca paint pens. This was a nice small size they could take home with them easily. A few of the younger students wrote to mum and dad on the back as they were missing home.

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Having just had a new playground installed and a large blank wall facing it the principal of St Brendan’s School reached out to me with her ideas. She was an after a piece of line art that told a story about the school and their values and feature the students having fun. This artwork is now a special visual they can use of school collateral and communications going forward.

I visited each class in the school and they shared with me what is special about their school, their favourite things to do at school and their values and beliefs. I used their ideas to create the artwork.

I painted the artwork onto the wall with a white primer coat followed by the colour and a graffiti shied to finish. This was a large wall and took some time but I am so happy with the end result.

School Mural St Brendan’s, Upper Hutt - Principal Veronica Sawers, Artist Amy Burrell

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I was asked to come and work on a special mural with a group of year eight students at St Brendan’s School in Upper Hutt. They wanted to create a piece of artwork to communicate and celebrate their GRACE values and aimed to display it at the front of the school. As this was their final year it was their gift to the school and future students.

The students had to carry out the entire collaborative process from creating a brief, research, concept creation and design, enlarging the design onto the board, painting and presenting it to the school.

I worked with this group for one session per week throughout the term with the project completed in time for their farewell assesmbly. They did such a fantastic job!

Painted Mural at St Brendan’s School, Upper Hutt

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St Joseph's School is in the heart of Upper Hutt and shares a strong relationship and connection with the wider community. I worked with a group of students to create three large mural panels for display on their school building. The aim of these murals was to celebrate and bring light to the wonderful history the school has.

With a group of year 7 and 8 students we spent around 12 weeks diving into the history of not only the school but the wider Wellington region. We started with a trip into Wellington’s Te Wharewaka o Pōneke where we learnt about Kupe’s discovery of New Zealand and how life was for Maori. Next we talked to people throughout the school about the important catholic people who started the school and bought Catholicism to New Zealand. We created a historical timeline which included all important historical events from the pre historic age to now - featuring earthquakes, arrivals, treaty signings and buildings being burnt down. We picked out the events that were important and meaningful to the students to focus on for our murals.

Along the way each student created a fun animal self portrait using a plywood round and Posca paint pens. These personal works helped the students practice putting multiple ideas into a single artwork. It was also a fun way to use visual storytelling, symbols and metaphors.

We used these skills to draw each of the historical events that would feature in the murals. We started by drawing the events individually then trying to put them all together into a three compositions in a logical way. This involved a lot of fun collaborative whiteboards sessions and discussions. We created several rounds of concepts which we presented to the principal and deputy principal making changes to reflect their feedback. Once they were happy we started the process of transferring the artwork onto the primed panels.

We used the doodle grid method to transfer the artwork onto the boards. This was a challenging activity that worked really well with a large group as many hands make light work. Once complete each student worked in a single colour applying the paint to our designs. Once the colour was complete we added the black outline.

Once the murals were complete a Resene graffiti shield paint was applied to the panels to protect them from any damage. The caretaker then attached them to the side of the building. We celebrated by inviting the community to join us for the unveiling and morning tea. This was such a wonderful project and I am once again blown away with what students of this age can think up and create. I can only image what creative endeavours they will achieve in their futures. this project was funded by the Creative in Schools initiative.

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One of the greatest joys of creating art is showing it to people and the simple act of doing so makes a valuable statement to both the viewer and the creator. I am an artist! In this workshop students learnt some simple achievable ways to create art they can share and display to promote themselves as an artist.

The face of the art world is changing, artists are no longer limited to gallery spaces or exclusive spaces, and more artists are choosing to run similarly to small businesses. Part of this process is self-advertising, and an incredibly popular method for youth is by making art stickers that promote the branding of the artist themselves.

Through a series of fun activities the students learnt the power of self promotion and how they can create a fulfilling career as an artist. They then came up with some concepts and created some final artwork using Posca paint pens on watercolour paper. We photographed the designs and printed them onto sticker paper. The students proudly left with their stickers ready to share their art with the world on laptop covers, skateboard decks, binders and drink bottles.

“Amy was such a pleasure to host and ran a thoughtful, passionate and inspiring workshop with our students. They were so engaged!

Shannon Mae-Read - Head of Art Dept, UPPER HUTT College

“Amy provided lots of art career-based wisdom - inspiring future artists. The work the students made was bright and engaged all involved.”

Caroline Hollow - Art Teacher, UPPER HUTT College

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Chris Steffensen, Wayne Guppy, Selina Ede, Andrew Herrick

I was approached by Andrew Herrick the principal of St Jospeh’s Primary School to collaborate with them on creating a picture book to give to new students starting at the school. The books aim was to help them feel welcome and learn about the schools values and culture with their families. I was thrilled to be part of this project!

As you can imagine creating a book entails a lot of different skills sets; story creation, editing, illustration, layout, printing just to name a few. The beautiful thing about a printed story book is it can be read and enjoyed over and over again. A lot of school information on paper flyers doesn’t last very long however a book is treasured.

Process

Our first challenge was to create a story that communicated all the values and history of the school. Andrew already had a great initial plot idea of ‘The Church that Joseph Built’ which was based around the story ‘The House that Jack Built.’ With this as our starting point a full story was fleshed out. We split the story into spreads and continued to simplify and reduce the word count. Once we had a concrete story it was sent around the staff to proof read, critique and give feedback.

Then it was my time to shine with the illustration creation. But first we contacted our printer (About Print) and picked the size and stock of the books so as not to get any surprises later on or create artwork to the wrong aspect ratio.

Once this was confirmed I started to create thumbnails of each spread. These were sent through to Andrew and his team and we discussed how the story was to be portrayed visually. I then created some character designs of each of the main characters. These were sent to Andrew and his team to pick their favourites. I then created more detailed sketches of each spread to scale. This step involved a lot of visual fact checking as there are many real historical people they needed to show likeness and be accurately represented.

Once these pencil sketches were perfect and approved I coloured up one spread digitally to a final illustration. With some small adjustments to the overall look and feel of the book I continued to work my way through the rest of the illustrations.

The final illustrations we placed with the text layout and the book design was finessed. We sent the final book to a professional editing service to make sure there was no missed errors. We then added a page at the end with some historical photos of the school and church. We sent it off the the printers for a proof. The proof was great. So we proceeded with a large print run. Every child to start the school over the next 10 years or so will get a copy of this book. Such a wonderful project to be part of and I am so proud of the end result!

Questions

How long does a project like this take?

I would allow at least 3 months but ideally 6 months.

How much does a project like this cost?

Each book project will vary in price depending on number of pages, number of illustrations and number of copies you would like printed. Bear in mind once the artwork is created you can use it over and over again in many applications throughout the school. Once you have a rough idea get in touch with me for an official quote so you can secure the correct funding.

Costs involved

Editing

Illustration

Book design/layout

Printing

Shipping

Can the children be involved in the creation?

Absolutely they can! I love working with children on creative projects and this it is vital in getting my work to relate to the correct age group and community. There are a million ways to do this and each project is different. I tend to discuss ideas around this during the project briefing discussions.

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Throughout the first half of 2022 I have been working on a special project with a class of intermediate students at St Joseph’s School in Upper Hutt. Over a ten week period we researched, designed and created this amazing 5m long mural to be hung at the entrance of the school. It features many things that are special to these students and who they are as a school. I absolutely loved being part of this project and it forced me to deconstruct my creative process in order to guide these student on their creative journey. Heres a breakdown of what we got up to.

EXPERIMENTING WITH PAINT AND MARK MAKING

In our first session we experimented with painting techniques and mark making using acrylic paints on large paper. We looked at colour mixing and how to create different textures with paint and random objects like sponges and toothbrushes. This was messy, expressive and lots of fun!

MURAL TOUR

We went on a walking mural tour around Upper Hutt where we admired some of the wonderful murals created by talented local artists. We even visited a local artist ‘Chimp’ in his studio and were able to ask him lots of questions about being an artist and creating large scale artwork. He kindly demonstrated how he uses a spray can and showed us some of the pieces he was working on for international and local clients.

RESEARCH

We brainstormed and talked about what makes the school special and how we could represent this visually in our mural. We used the internet to look at some famous New Zealand mural artists and took colour and subject inspiration to use in our own concepts. We created three concepts which we presented to the school via social media and they voted on their favourite. We developed the chosen concept into our final artwork. The final artwork features two students doing a traditional Māori greeting called a hongi, the school kowhaiwhai pattern, the church with cross, a dove featured in the school crest, reference to the Remutaka mountain ranges and the Te Akurangi river as well as two large taniwha from the local legend of Whataitai and Ngake.

Transferring the artwork

We used the doodle grid method to transfer the final artwork onto our large panels in pencil. This took a lot of accuracy and patience as to get all four panels art to line up and look correct.

Painting the mural

We laid our boards out on large tables with drop clothes and started painting. We started by blocking in the large shapes then worked our way to the finer details. With a large group of students we were able to cover a lot of board in a small amount of time. Many of the shapes needEd multiple coats. The finished panels were then given a coat of graffiti stop varnish then installed on the wall near the entrance of the school.