Crawley Oak celebrates the people and nature of Crawley, with the design emerging from conversations with residents and images of local people and places. This tree is inspired by a nearby oak tree in Memorial Gardens.
As the trees around us change season, the painted tree will remain constant, bringing our attention to these changes and rhythms of nature and inviting us to notice and enjoy our green spaces.
This is the first mural Eloise has created in England. After studying classical realist painting, Eloise combines painting in the studio with murals in public space, motivated by the direct connection between the artwork and communities.
Her imagery is drawn from her surroundings, capturing subtle gestures in body language and movement. She creates images that open up to interpretation on individual as well as collective levels.
This is one of six murals made in 2023/24 by Creative Playground. Watch this film to see the story of how they were made.
The #CrawleyMurals have been made in partnership with a group of 19 Crawley residents who are part of the Creative Playground Playmakers group and/or were employed by Creative Playground as Community Connectors. We worked with them every month from August 2023 to now, to develop the ideas, recruit the artists (from a pool of 126 artists that applied from across the world) and decide on final designs and locations for the murals.
We ran workshops with around 350 other local people with the artists we commissioned who helped to shape the designs for the murals.
Find out more about the other murals below:
Find out more about the other murals below:
Oluwafemi Babalola’s Coloured Realms
Alec Saunders’ Gateway to the World
Eloise Gillow’s Broadfield Conversations
Sarah Pimenta’s The Fabric of Crawley 2024
The sixth mural in this series will be installed in June in Manor Royal by artist Jac Seifert from Orakel Workshop. This project builds on other murals in the town that have been made and still exist including those in Three Bridges, on the wall of M&S in The Pavement, at Broadfield Barton, on Dorsten Square and in Crawley Library. There are others that sadly don’t exist anymore including the mosaic mural in Crawley town centre and we stand on the shoulders of all that work.
We hope these murals will last forever (well at least ten years) and that they will inspire others to brighten up the town with arts and culture of all kinds. We’d love to know what you think about them.
Send us an email on [email protected] or DM us @creativeplaygroundcrawley on Instagram or Facebook.
Credits
Playmakers
Clive Martin, Ian Irvine, Iyadh Daoud, Izzy Burghard, Jade Hand, Jade Standeven, Jodie and Ettie Williams, Kathy Rogers, Kathy and Lily Sarjantson, Liz Hart, Rashne Everington
Community Connectors
Lucy Bear, Mark Hales, Nia Finlay, Saaj Raja, Tracy Frake, Viv Evans
Creative Playground Team
Becky Jones, Ben Lintott, Erin Beesley, Harriet McDermott, Lara Hockman, Louise Blackwell, Pav Randhawa, Sam Evans, Sophie Eustace
Murals freelance team
Daria Lipinska, Dom Foster, Ina Miller, Jack Crotty, Kenny Taylor, Lana Needham, Reg Garfield, Sean Phillips
Documentation team
Ian Greenland, Jacob Punter, Naresh Kaushal, Rosie Powell
This mural was funded by Arts Council England, Crawley Borough Council and Crawley Town Centre BID
#CrawleyMurals
Images by: Rosie Powell and Ian Greenland
