'To learn', Forest High School, Cinderford, 2021.

This mural is huge by my standards, keep scrolling down to see it all.

To see a virtual 3D model made by Jazz Cousins of the entire mural click on any image. If you go to the ? button in the bottom right of the model image you'll find out how you can easily control the model and zoom into to see any part of the mural in detail.

The school is a 1960's budget brutalist architecture style. A lot of people find it oppressive. My job was to decorate and humanise.

After 5 design idea failures I fixed on a design attempting to celebrate acts and languages of learning, interlaced with shool house icons, and mission statements.

Because the design period co-incided with lockdown I was unable to do as much design consultation as made me confident that the design was universally robust, and didn't feature some awkward aspects,

but to my relief everyone who said anything was really positive - the students, teachers, neighbours, hanging out kids, and passers by.

Originally I was to paint with students, but due to lockdown it was felt the kids were academically too far behind, so I experimented training up Laurie Cousins and Charlie Herbert, which worked out really well.

I was asked to make the work Forest High specific, so I included things like the road map of Cinderford, text by Harry Beddington, the score for 'Unbelieveabe' by EMF, the miner, a discrete reference to John McAfee, and the map of Romania to reflect the large Romanian origin population in the school.

This building is the school swimming pool which is why the design is based on a wave

To see a virtual 3D model made by Jazz Cousins of the entire mural click on any image. If you go to the ? button in the bottom right of the model image you'll find out how you can easily control the model and zoom into to see any part of the mural in detail.