Creative Communities Creating Communities

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Creative Communities Creating Communities 〰️

Students from Donegall Road Primary School and Fane Street Primary School beside the “Living Together As A Community” mural on Malone Mews

On Thursday the 28th of May, Donegall Road Primary School and Fane Street Primary School arrived at Malone Mews to unveil a brand new colourful ‘Living Together As A Community’ mural based around the concept of diversity and shared housing!

It was created in part by the kids themselves who gave their interpretations of what shared housing means, then designed up by ArtCart Coordinator Ruairí Jordan and printed on waterproof PVC. As you can see, many of them associated the concept with love, acceptance, and community!

Young peoples’ depictions of love, community and acceptance, all fundamental aspects of shared housing that would inspire the mural

The mural is part of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive’s ‘Housing For All’ scheme – and a collaborative project between WheelWorks and Ark Housing. The programme saw WheelWorks deliver joint sessions with both primary schools as well as individual workshops on street art and digital illustration exploring shared housing. The sessions gave the young people an opportunity to meet new friends and learn.

After unveiling the mural at Malone Mews, the young people journeyed over to the Morton Community Centre to take part in an interactive and fun workshop designing tote bags!

Led by our facilitator Ciara and ran with Rachel, Francis, and Jonathan, the kids started with a game of Exquisite Corpse where A3 sheets of paper were folded three times equally. The young people would each draw a head on the first fold before turning it over. Then, they would pass the sheet to the person beside them and they would draw the next body part. This would carry on until a variety of strange and hilarious creatures were created! Many of them were even given wacky names!

The creative skills of the students on full display during their first workshop

The main event of the workshop was tote bag designing where each young person was given a blank tote bag and was encouraged to draw a design inspired by the ‘Living Together As A Community’ mural. They had the opportunity to add in whatever they could imagine such as their own names, emojis, vivid patterns, rainbows, the name of their school and much more.

A variety of markers were used like fabric and paint markers, and many different custom made stencils that displayed words and symbols associated with the mural. The stencils, which were designed by Ciara, included designs such as hands creating a heart or words like ‘friendship’ and ‘together as a community!’

So many unique and fabulous tote bags were created with so many different styles, all of which were brought home as a memento of the young people’s time at the workshop! Some of the teachers took part in helping the kids and even made some of their own!

The participants drawing together as a community during their final workshop of the first block

One of the methods of promoting inclusivity is by bringing these two schools together to collaborate and get creative. There was an effort to have each table be split evenly with young people from both schools to offer a more diverse experience. Because of this, the pupils were able to mix and meet people they may never have met before, leading to opportunities for new friendships that may last long after the workshops finish and for fun to develop! 

A mindmap of kids’ interpretation of what shared housing is and what it means to them

The celebration day finished when the young people left with their terrific tote bags, marvellous monsters, and a packet of crunchy crisps! If you are interested in learning more or having us host a similar project, please email us at artcart@wheelworksarts.com. 

Ark Housing is a non-profit housing organization that provides general needs homes as well as supported and sheltered accommodation across Northern Ireland. The ‘Living Together As A Community’ mural project was designed to support their new shared housing location at Malone Mews.

As part of the ‘Housing for All’ programme, the project was supported by the Department for Communities and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. ‘Housing for All’ aims to improve relations between different communities and is open to everyone regardless of religion, race or background.

Good Relations funding will be used to help develop the Malone Mews community in a five mile radius over the course of a five-year Good Relations plan and aims to ensure that a single community does not exceed the 70%/30% mix ratio.

As has been displayed recently, tensions between communities can still be high in certain areas so the hope is that this will be a positive step in the right direction.