We are different shades of people and are all threads in the social fabric of a society celebrating inclusion and belonging.
The mural showcases different Crawley buildings chosen by residents and children from The Mill Primary School in Ifield who also feature and helped make the design.
Bright colours unite us through our similarities rather than dividing us through difference.
Sarah is an experienced artist, lecturer and facilitator, working professionally as a participatory artist in education for over twenty years. She has delivered creative workshops in over 250 primary and secondary schools nationally and two in Africa.
Sarah co-created and illustrated the ‘Therapeutic Fairy Tale’ series of six books for children and worked with children and mothers impacted by the Grenfell fire through workshops and creation of banners and items to decorate new homes.
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.
Alec Saunders’ Gateway to the World
Eloise Gillow’s Broadfield Conversations
Oluwafemi Babalola’s Coloured Realms
This is one of six murals made in 2023/24 by Creative Playground.
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.
Find the murals here:
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 is funded by Arts Council England.
#CrawleyMurals
Images by: Ian Greenland, Rosie Powell and Creative Playground Crawley. Graphic by Ben Lintott.
