The Painting Machine
THE PAINTING MACHINE
Large scale mural designed through a participatory process, using our own tool inventions.
A co-designed public mural for a sports arena in Halmstad! The mural was designed with a group of children with developmental disabilities from Getingeskolan.
We started the process by re-thinking the act of painting. How can we make it more accessible and how can we switch the focus to the painting process instead of the result? During our first workshop the children were invited to build new, playful tools for painting and mark-making. We made stamps with our shoes, extended our reach with poles and ropes, modified wheels to roll patterns and smushed paint through window cleaners. Our second meeting was focused on stamp making. We used differently sized and textured sponges, elastic bands, paint rollers and cardboard to make our own stamps and create patterns.
Our final 'making' workshop revolved around collage and composition building. The adult designers then used these collages to build a composition for the final mural. We took care to copy and represent the child participants work so that they could feel a sense of ownership and connection to the final mural.
LOCATION
Halmstad Arena
PARTNERS
Halmstad City art dept.
Getingeskolan Särfritids
PROJECT TEAM
+ Catherine Paterson (Lekkontoret)
+ Luke de Jager
+ Johan Engqvist
+ Tea
+ Avla
+ Simon
+ Gabriel
+ August
MY CONTRIBUTION
Concept Development, Co-design Workshop Facilitator,
Graphic Design / Mural Layout, Implementation
YEAR
2023
