Playground art

The writing’s on the wall... and the floor and any other hard surface that children can paint, scribble or draw on, say Susan Humphries and Susan Rowe...

Writing, whatever the canvas, is a form of art – something children will discover when they use surfaces around the school to practise letter shapes, print words of wisdom, offer directions, and scribe famous quotations to inspire passing readers.

For Remembrance Day last year, children studied the war poetry of the first and second world wars. Each child chose one line from a poem and chalked this across the school drive before reading out his or her poignant excerpt. The work finished at eleven o’clock on the 11th November and, later in the day, children from other classes came outside to read the poetry and reflect on the wars that had inspired the words. Parents also read the work when they came to pick up children at the end of the school day. It was a very moving experience that gave us all pause for thought.

Working outside together to personalise the appearance of their environment can be very liberating for children – beyond school, the growing interest in street art is about re-claiming rights on community spaces and influencing their character. It’s a deep rooted practice. For millennia, people have told personal stories by marking pictures and symbols on the landscape. We show the children images of the Palaeolithic cave paintings at Lascaux or the Drakensberg Park in South Africa. Closer to home, we show images of cave etchings at Creswell Crags in Nottinghamshire, or Rocky Valley in Cornwall.

Creating art at ground level necessitates the good-natured sharing of space. Children have to take an interest in the work going on around them, which strengthens group loyalty.
One of the best things about working outside is that children dare to be more experimental, and using a large area requires lots of physical energy. The result is a freely-drawn exhibition and we walk around each other’s work, noticing detail and making helpful comments.

Often children go outside to practise writing letters or numbers, or to record their thoughts and try out ideas. Drafting is a skill we encourage as it gives children the chance to make mistakes and start again. For very young children it is a wonderful opportunity to develop gross motor coordination skills and to practise writing left to right.

Anything written or drawn on pathways or the playground will not last long. Chalk and charcoal are the most impermanent options, while emulsion paint is best for displays that have been planned to last six weeks or so. The duration of the writing is also weather dependent.

We ask parents to donate emulsion paint in any quantity and similar shades of paint are mixed together.  Adding acrylic powder paint makes subtle colours that can be used for a collage of painted words or letter shapes. The result is not strident, like street art or spray painting, and it fades away over time in an aesthetically pleasing way.

At times during the year, we ask our parent group to come and paint outside with us. As with the children, we give them buckets of emulsion filled with only a few centimetres of paint in case they are accidentally knocked over, and so that brushes cannot be overloaded. We also provide buckets of water and small pieces of foam sponge so that any mistakes can be easily erased (for about an hour afterwards – it is much more difficult to get rid of older errors). The parents add to the theme being followed by the children – for several years pupils have used chalk and charcoal to draw representations of the sunflowers they have harvested earlier in the day. The outdoor surfaces are then turned into a huge art gallery to be enjoyed by the whole school family.

The children are photographed as they draw or paint on the hard surfaces and sometimes these pictures are collected for a display. Looking back at an activity can help adults and children to see unusual aspects of the work that might not present itself if it were simply entered into children’s books.

We often put thumbnail photos into the children’s books to build a personal record of their time at school; through photographs, fleeting memories are made real once again.

About the authors

Susan Humphries and Susan Rowe are both former heads at The Coombes School, renown for its vibrant outdoor classrooms and seasonal curriculum.