Cedar Elementary is a mecca of activity these days. The sounds of excited chatter bounce off the school walls as the kids eagerly make their way outside to see how their creation is coming along.
The wall of their school gym is being painted with a large mural – a beautiful piece of art that captures the Cedar community and what the school means to each and every student.
There are kids playing soccer – a favourite pastime for many of the school’s students – as well as a real head scratcher for the staff.
“Watermelons kept coming up,” says Vice-Principal Aaron O’Shannessy. “None of the teachers know why.”
The mural also contains a nod to a teacher’s beloved chocolate lab, who has become an integral part of the school. Not wanting to leave out the school pet, the dog is painted into the mural wearing a lab coat, in recognition of the kids’ love of science.
There is also a line of baby ducks following its mother – a tribute to yet another teacher who the students refer to as Mother Duck.
The school’s motto Be Safe Be Kind is prominently painted alongside a brightly coloured rainbow. O’Shannessy says the mural encourages one of the school’s goals – to adopt a sense of ownership.
“If we’re going to expect the kids to take pride in their building and school community we want to make it look nice so it’s easy to promote that,” O’Shannessy says.
The mural is being funded through the Health Promoting Schools program, a Public Health Agency of Canada program. Cedar is one of eight schools participating on the Island. Last year, the school put up scores of sea hawks along the fence which lines 2nd Avenue and this year O’Shannessy decided to go bigger.
He was inspired by an ArtStarts program he witnessed last summer in Vancouver.
“A lady there gave us a real moving message of how powerful art is,” he said. “They had done a beautiful felt mural in one of the schools there which showed eight stages of the year. Each class got a stage and put it together, and they talked about how it connected the kids to the school.”
So O’Shannessy got in touch with artist Alex Witcombe who recently painted the large two-storey mural on the side of the Aquatic Sciences building on Pier Street, as well as several of the community’s utility boxes, banners in Spirit Square and the digital mural wrapped around the outside of the Volunteer Centre on St. Ann’s.
Witcombe helped the kids brainstorm ideas that were subsequently drawn by the kids onto Witcombe’s planning board – in this case, Witcombe’s car which is completely covered in chalkboard paint.
“We just let them loose,” Witcombe says. “One of the questions we asked was ‘what do you appreciate about Cedar Elementary?’ and then I took all of their ideas and put them into one big mural.”
Painting began early Tuesday morning and was expected to wrap up today.
Students and even their parents have all had a hand in painting the mural.
As part of the school’s family drop-in program, which has close to 40 participants, entire families got the chance to put their strokes on the mural Tuesday afternoon.
“We had all these people painting for hours,” O’Shannessy says. “We had 35 parents painting. We’re trying to build engagement and community so it’s cool to see these families being a part of it.”
He added that one of the goals is to get every kid to touch some paint – that’s 170 students.
Carmen Jensen, a public health nurse working with the Health Promoting Schools program, said the mural is bringing the school community together.
“The mural is a fabulous way to build leadership in students and connectedness,” says Jensen who credited O’Shannessy for the success of the project. “He got the entire school around it.”
O’Shannessy doesn’t see it that way.
“She (Jensen) was the saviour for the project,” he says, after an ArtStarts in Schools grant application was unsuccessful earlier in the school year.
When Health Promoting Schools stepped in, the project was given new life and will be a lasting legacy for years to come.
“The mural incorporates all the ideas from the students,” he says. “There’s nothing on there by accident.”