Stockbridge Village Community Project

I was so happy to be approached by Heart of Glass and ForHousing to be part of a wonderful community project where I grew up in Stockbridge Village, Liverpool. The project was commissioned by ForHousing, produced by Heart of Glass and funded by Arts Council England.

The project was to spend some time, create and engage with the community and design and paint a huge mural on the gable end of the shops inspired by the work we would create together. Before Christmas, 2023 I met up with my producer Rhyannon (heart of glass) and visited some of the many wonderful community groups that meet on the farm (Stockbridge village used to be called Cantril Farm) so will always be known as the farm. There are groups that garden, colour in, sew, support, educate, go for walks you name it there’s someone epic in the community making it happen. We spoke about the project and being from this community, and I was excited to go back early 2024 to work with the groups in a creative way.

My main reason for creating Art is to find peace and harmony and I wanted to share my process with the groups and community as a whole. I think art is definitely a healing tool and can help anyone of all ages in loads of ways, so I designed a template called a peace pattern.

It is a process that makes an interesting geometric pattern just by following a few steps and once drawn can be coloured, collaged or painted. It is very relaxing and simple and the results are fun and always surprise.

I shared this process with each group and whilst we did them, we chatted about our experiences growing up on the estate and what their hopes for their community are now. As they coloured and collaged in I asked them to choose a word that expresses how they feel about their community and then to try and channel those thoughts into their creative choices. That would become the title of their peace pattern.

I was so lucky to work with a range of community groups and ages in this project. Starting with two local primary schools St Brigids and Stockbridge Village primary years 4 and 5, the Sewing group with my eldest art worker being the wonderful Ann who was 83. I loved going to the Flourish and Succeed recovery men’s group, wow their peace pattern designs were next level!

I visited the colouring in group, safari kids group, the skill centre, pheonix group and the young rangers group. We also held open sessions in a shop at the shopping parade where anyone could drop in and do the peace patterns and have a chat with us. There was lots of chatting!

In the sewing group one of the woman Ann, took the reigns and designed a peace pattern on behalf of the whole group. She followed the instructions, then asked all her friends in the group to choose a colour, so each shape in her peace pattern represented one of her friends in the group. She named their peace pattern Friendship. With them being a sewing group I turned their peace pattern into fabric for them to make their own designs with and also some bags for them to carry their work and shopping around.

Working with all the groups and the community we created over 160 gorgeous peace pattern designs! I took them to my studio, lay them out and I used them as inspiration for the mural design.

When it came time to design the mural I sat amongst all the incredible designs and picked a few key elements from them, then I managed to wangle it down to 9 designs created by different community members which I gladly included in the final design. Thank you Michalina (St Brigids Yr5), Robert (St Alberts), Sadie (St Brigids Yr5), Charlotte (St Brigids Yr5), William (Stockbridge Village Primary Yr5), Taiwop (Stockbridge Village Primary Yr5), Bernard (Flourish and Succeed, HIVE mens group), Ann (sewing group) and Albert (St Brigids Yr4) Because all the designs were brilliant I have turned them into a colouring book for the community (see further down the post)

Designing the mural was loads of fun. I think it was because I was so inspired and had such inspirational work to take from. Once I was happy with the design and ForHousing and Heart of Glass were happy a recreated a scaled down drawing of the mural to use as my guide. I wanted to grid the wall and have a detailed plan of were everything must go so I marked out every 120cm then marked every 20cm. This was a detailed plan. Fun times AHEAD.

With the wall being so high I had to put my hard hat on and go back to school and do my scissor lift and cherry picker license! That was scary and wonderful all at the same time but I am so glad I did it because I loved every minute on my scissor lift! With the plan drawn up, wall rendered and my paint colours and amounts chosen it was time for my dear assistant Siobhan to arrive and for us to start drawing out the wall!

We had so many people stop and chat to us and I got to see so many old friends through out the weeks. It was amazing! We even had a couple of visits from the St Brigid’s class we worked with which was so sweet! The community brought us treats and because it was so delightfully hot they brought us lolly ices to cool down. I think every single member of my family showed up and some point. We had only one day that was rained off the rest of the time the weather was manageable, a little too hot at times but still lovely. After 1 week Siobhan had to return back down south and my next assistant, Martin filled in for the last week.

At the very end Rhyannon had to steal the paintbrush off me because I could of carried on adding other bits haha. I enjoyed painting it so much! We painted 10hrs most days and it took about 2 weeks to complete. We had a little week off then had a wonderful launch event and the super talented children from Yr5 St Brigid’s Catholic primary kindly sang to open the wall!! I hung everyone’s work up in the empty shop so the community could see how incredibly talented they were, and we had a free icy van for refreshments, with sherbet and everything! loads of people turned up it was a brilliant day! It was amazing seeing the artists whose work I chose for the mural see their work come alive on a great big scale!

Like I mentioned above there was no way I could not do something with everyone else’s designs so I spent time redrawing them all digitally and have turned them into a colouring book. It was also a way to thank everyone who came and shared their stories and created such beautiful work. All the designs were now black and white line line drawings placed together. I thought that whenever anyone was feeling stressed or anxious they could have a moment of relaxation and colour in one of the patterns in their own time. I gave it the same title I gave the project, HOME and I also added some peace patterns in there too. I hope everyone enjoys them as much as I enjoyed every single part of this project!

I go to my nan and grandads every week and we drive past the mural, It fills me with pride and happiness! Thank you Stockbridge Village for being just the most unique place to be from!

Thanks you photographer Jazamin Sinclair for the celebration event photos and Steve Samosa photography for this epic night time shot!

As a thank you to everyone involved in our project I got some of their designs and one of mine printed on to shopping bags for them to carry and we handed them out to everyone.