Kingfisher Primary School Mosaic Project.
Kingfisher Primary School is quite extraordinary, staff worked even harder one year to cover another member of staff’s role so that the school could have more money to spend on the children. They created an environment where an artist could be brought into school to make two large mosaic panels that all the children in the school worked on.
The mosaic was designed to be 3D and its theme was to represent all things that had happened in Doncaster and in fact anywhere during the Queen’s 70 years on the throne. I started this design using ideas of texture, colour and pattern from Lucien day’s 1950’2 fabric designs. the children worked on the mosaics using their own designs within each section of the design. The panels were assembled back in my studio onto the 3D bases I created. I then infilled all the white areas around their work to make the image whole.
After grouting and installing we were all really pleased with the result. Sorry I can’t show the children it’s a safeguarding issue but I can say they were so excited to be involved and very proud of their work.
The children were introduced to the work of designer Lucienne Day to understand the use of colour blocking in the design which was influenced by 1950’s fabric design.
The pallet of ceramic tiles was restricted so that the children could work out how many was needed of each shade to make a pattern. They used tally and ratios to work this out.
They enjoyed working out how many to cut to fill the shapes and worked together in a team to manage this.
The project gave the children lots of new skills in design and the creation of art as a group. It also brought history and culture into their minds as they worked. various searches on an iPad to find connections with what they were making e.g.other artists using mosaic and how many babies were being born every minute globally.
As groups changed over the next group was introduced to the techniques and colours by the last group which encouraged co operation and development of communication and team work.