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Enlivening the environment at Neyland Pupil Referral Unit.

With the community arts group Sand Palace Arts www.sandpalacearts.org.uk Charlotte Cortazzi, Pauline Le Britton and myself worked with the Participation Unit at Save the Children on a ‘Reach the Heights’ funded project with PRIDE, the Pupil Referral Unit in Neyland.

The PRU referred young people on to the project, all young people attending the PRU are, or are at risk of becoming NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training).

The 25 young people that we worked with wanted to focus on making changes to their school environment to make it a brighter and more pleasant place.

They decided to work on sculptural seating for the areas that they spend their break times and to make large-scale paintings on plywood to hang on
the wall in these spaces.

They achieved this in 10 days of workshops in both woodcarving and painting.

The young people worked as a team and were involved in all aspects of the project from the design stages, construction and carving of benches, making bench supports and drilling and fixing them together to the final installation. They designed the murals, looking at inspiration from graffiti artists, muralists and poster art, enlarging imagery using an
overhead projector, choosing and mixing colours, painting their designs, varnishing and fixing them to the exterior walls.

The project has transformed areas of the school where before there were bare walls and nowhere to sit into a brighter environment with seating and colourful artworks.

Three young people that took part in the project attended consistently and produced some good pieces of work and approached the project with a lot of enthusiasm. They are being supported in gaining an accreditation for their work.