Opening the Wakefield Library Mural

Yes, my mural is up!! We had an official opening on Thursday. 

The printing company, Art Display, put it up while I was away in Barcelona. It was printed onto a very high quality wallpaper then pasted onto the wall - much easier than painting in situ:

I am thrilled to bits with how it looks. It has such impact in the space and, because of the big, colourful characters, you can easily see it from the street, through the library's front window, so I'm hoping it will lure children in. Luckily all the library team at Wakefield are very proud of it too. 

To create the characters, I worked with Y3 classes from two local schools, St Austins Catholic Primary and Flanshaw Primary. Everyone's favourite was 'the gorilla with the blue boobies', as Andy Wright, the Library Manager, put it. The gorilla was created by Ben, who based his character on my Big Gorilla in An Itch to Scratch. Ben's version definitely has a little something extra though, and the Gorilla Fun Book he's borrowing from the library is a lovely finishing touch. Well done Ben! 

The library team have been rushing around, trying to get the mural up and ready before the end of the school year, as we wanted to invite the original school groups back for the opening day. The children got to see their work for the first time since our original workshop in the Spring, and seemed quite overawed by it all. 

We were joined for our celebrations by Councillor David Jagger (Portfolio Holder for Culture, Sport and Libraries), as well as the Service Manager for Libraries and Richard from Art Display. 

After the speeches and photos, I did a storytelling / workshop for the children. The mural was inspired by Dragon's Dinner, but we looked at that last time we met, so I let them choose which book they wanted me to read and the overwhelming winner was good old Stinky!.

The children relaxed a bit once we got underway and they all really got stuck into the drawing:

It was a lovely day and so thrilling to see my work writ so large. So, a big thank you to Andy and Alison at Wakefield Library for organising Thursday, and of course for commissioning me to do the artwork in the first place. 

So, if you have a boring wall in your school or library, you now know where to come...