Updates
Despite the harsh funding environment, we have managed to get the school going again out of sheer determination! We are responding to the challenge by adapting the formats of our courses we create to fit new circumstances. We will run two courses from now til April 2024: a micro muralist course for beginners ( University of East London) and The Muralist Development Course which will again run at Goldsmiths.. Both courses are fully booked. We have selected 13 students for our ´Muralist Development Course´ which starts in January. We have offered young talented muralists at the beginning of their careers a 50% scholarship so as to maintain accessibility. This means we now need to continue to fundraise for the other 50 % of the cost. You have supported us in the past which means you believe in our energetic purpose and project. We would really appreciated it if you can consider continuation of your support going forward. Here is the link: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/lsomuralism Thanks for staying with us. We will go all the way to becoming a recognisable force for good, meaningful and purposeful murals in London in the next five years. And that is a promise. Warm wishes, Patricio Forrester & LSoM Team
Since we last updated you, a while back, our graduates from The School of Muralism have been producing their own murals and winning important commissions to sustain their work. Meanwhile, we has been looking for more funding to continue to run our course and share our skills in participatory muralism. Unfortunately, the funding environment for London based organisations like us have grown ever more difficult - two failed applications to the Arts Council of England was really frustrating. Still we are not put off so easily, so we have decided a possible way forward which is to charge students a small fee of £500 for our course and find the remaining funds ourselves. We will be starting a new shorter course in January 2024 and we are looking to raise 6K to complete the necessary funds to run it. Our end of course mural will be a high profile wall in Waterloo! We remain committed to teaching artists who have it in them to create positive change in this complex scenario we continue to live in. You have supported us in the past during the Pandemic and we hope you can continue to do so after having delivered our first successful pilot. It is really important for us to continue, even if we haven't yet found a way forward that doesn't include asking you for funds! To support us: justgiving.com/campaign/lsomuralism
Just a quick update as we get closer to the exciting end of our School of Muralism project. We just completed our first of two ´school led ´participatory murals. As part of out teaching method, the students first lead their own projects so they get a sense of the challenges in the making process and engaging others. Then we direct two end of course murals so that they get to see our twenty years experience in action, resolving complex riddles to come up with a good image to paint. Yesterday, we finished ´The Jumper mural´, which we worked with service users from the 999 Club for Homeless people in Deptford. We asked them about the state of mind they arrive to the Charity and what they find there once they become part of the family. We came up with this analogy of a warm jumper with doors which are either open inwards, shut or open outwards. Above the doors you might read knitted words such as share, hesitant, laughter or empty. The location was an unloved corner of New Cross on the edge of Fordham Park. It was rewarding to see how enthusiastically local people responded to us painting over the last five days. The mural address is SE14 6DQ if you want to visit. We are now moving on to the last mural on Wearside Depot to celebrate the unsung heroes of the Pandemic, the Refuse Collectors from Lewisham Council. More in this later. Finally, we have heard of someone like you who supported our campaign, who is coming all the way from Manchester! This just makes us very happy indeed. If you are thinking of coming along to meet the budding muralists, to see the film we are putting together about our journey and hear all about our plans for the future, please book your free ticket to avoid disappointment. https://bit.ly/3J5pc2u Have a great weekend Patricio and Lsom Team
We are in the countdown for the end of our Lewisham School of Muralism Project, which you have kindly supported. And we are going to end with a Big Bang, and that you can be sure of. Over the last 18 months period, 52 murals have been painted by students and graduates, 33 students have completed one of our three courses, we have engaged 192 participants to create this murals but most importantly, we perfected our course so now we can continue to deliver participatory muralism to other communities across London and beyond. We will be painting the last two large scale murals on the coming weeks, one involving the 999 Club, a Homeless People Charity in Deptford and the other one with refuse collectors from Lewisham Council, the unsung heroes of the Pandemic. This was a public commission that the school won for the Lewisham Borough of Culture 2022. Finally, we want to celebrate the end of this extraordinary adventure in style and if possible, with you. We would be delighted if you join us on the 8th of April, from 4.30 onwards so we can share the entusiasm generated by the students and graduates who will be holding a panel to discuss the course and how it has impacted on their life and artistic practice. This will be a good networking event for them to meet potential supporters and hear about why you supported the project. We will also be presenting our ambitious plans going forward, of becoming the LONDON School of Muralism and our new funding strategy. It is a FREE event but booking is necessary at Evenbrite: https://bit.ly/3J5pc2u (please copy paste if necessary) Hope to see you there and have a great weekend! Patricio and all the Team behind LSoM
Our last course will be drawing to an end in March and the new students are really happy with the modifications we did to the course, following feedback from previous students and our own observations. For instance, their own participatory mural project has been moved forward so by now, the end of the first term, they have permission in place and will be starting on their participation process in January. This deadlines that we put in place, eliminated all possibilities of drifting and helped the students to secure a wall which they are now thinking very concretely about. This will leave us time to reflect on their projects before our course finishes. We also improved the way to build up their skills by doing the observational drawing in large scale and get them to paint large scale earlier too, first in back and white, then introduce color. Smaller steps but bigger pictures! Our site has been populated by new faces and we would like to invite you to visit it at www.lsomuralism.org We leave you with a one minute slide show of real people learning and being inspired by the course and our expert muralist mentors. By the end of March, we will complete this project and hit all the promised targets, despite Pandemic efforts to stop us! Hope you might want to support us in the next cycle beyond then. Best Regards Lewisham School of Muralism Team
The project is going well. We completed the second course with a very creative and popular mural on Chinbrook Meadows in Grove Park, south of Lewisham borough. Its an original idea - bridge inside a tunnel - something we are used to see either one or the other but never together... Our participatory process was a success, with a local teenager providing the initial idea for it, which we then developed into a beautiful site specific mural. The scale of it was larger that we budgeted for, but we were lucky enough to have Network Rail and one of our benefactors contributing to the final costs at the last minute. The students also produced their own participatory murals where they applied what they learned and realise what their strengths and weaknesses are and what they still need to learn going forwards. We are also proud to say that a group of graduates from our first course developed, crowdfunded (in Spacehive) and produced a fantastic mural in Pymmes Park, Edmonton. They energised the local community to produce a high quality mural on an abandoned war structure. So the energy and love is spreading beyond Lewisham already. In terms of the course development, we took into consideration lots of ideas and feedback from the students and produced a new Handbook with lots of improvements to the course. Our methods and aims have become a lot clearer now. We want to train young people into successful muralists who are able to engage community groups, give them a voice, while students find theirs in the process and finally come up with great looking murals for everyone to enjoy. We aim at completing the project at the end of March 2022 with 36 students graduated from our course. Three graduates have formed the Fundraising team now to create a sustainable school beyond then. One of them also becoming the school coordinator, so we are building up a strong organisation from the bottom up. Goldsmiths has recommitted to supporting us beyond March 2022, and we would like you to consider to continue to support us too. There are plenty of pictures on our website, so hope you visit us there soon Best Wishes LSoM Team
