Rathass, Tralee
Ann Moynihan contacted me asking if I would be able to revamp the interior of the Children & Family sector of the Rathass building.
The Social Work team in the Local Health Office is responsible for providing support to children and families in this community. This involves Family Support Services, and care for older people. In cases where children are at risk of harm through abuse, Child Protection Social Workers have an important role in providing care, assessment and follow up to those children and their families, through the Fostering and Child Protection Teams.
This was a space for those children, and Ann wanted to make the entire place feel more welcoming.
I then worked with Ann, and discussed what she wanted to achieve with this space. Due to COVID-19, being inside the building al the time may have proved difficult and Ann also wanted artwork that could be transferrable or reused in other sectors if everything was successful.
And so, I suggested that I do up everything digitally for this project which would allow the artwork to be reprinted as wall transfers, if ever they needed more.
Sketchwork
Ann also wanted to somehow collaborate with the children somehow and have them take part in the creation process of this mural.
I suggested that we have the children create concepts for what They want to be included in the series or murals. And so Ann, along with the rest of the staff members collected artwork form all of the children and send their work onto me.
Working with reoccurring themes throughout the children’s work I took inspiration from them to create an overarching concept for this series.
Children had drawn a lot of superheroes, cute animals and some had even build pieces out of lego for their submitted artwork. Along with these themes, I also wanted to represent the work that was done here.
And so, I compiled everything together and came up with the theme of superheroes helping cute little animals build homes. Simple, but it worked!
Putting it all Together!
After having all of the concepts and sketches approved, and scaling everything up I got in contact with Jsigns and discussed the idea of collaborating to create a series of 20-30 transferable “comic book” panels, to put all around Rathass.
And so, after a very enthusiastic, and positive response from Jason, I started creating the final illustrations.
I went for a soft pastel colour palette to give a more soothing and less intrusive feel to the overall collection of images. I wanted the place to be inviting and not soo loud, cool but not too in your face; and I think we got that just right.
Once the collection was complete, I handed things over to Jsigns who printed out and transferred the pieces with ease!
3 Houses
Ann also requested if she could have a physical object made up that would also be portable, and so I made up 3 wooden houses in which the children could interact with.
A small exercise the staff do with children is to get them to illustrate their “dream house”, a house they want, and what their house actually is like, and they work with the children from there.
And so I painted these 3 wooden houses, coating the insides with chalkboard paint which would allow the children to illustrate these 3 houses and bring them to life.
I kept the designs simple and not too distracting, but colourful enough to hopefully inspire.
Thank you!
Thank you to, Ann Moynihan, for trusting me with this project.
Thank you for your patience and creative input and for just being so easy to work with. You were so incredibly helpful from beginning to end and I can’t thank you enough for making this all possible.
Thank you to all of the staff for being so welcoming and inviting and also trusting me with your space.
Thank you to all of the children who took part handing in your beautiful artwork!
And thank you to Jason and his staff and Jsigns for jumping straight into this project and working so hard and being so passionate about the project. It was such an honour working with you!
