Mud Bugs
Brockley, South London
February 2022
The 34Bus Collective for this project are Amaechi Anolue, Liv Wright and Alistair Leys
Mud Bugs was created for and inspired by the children of Chelwood Nursery school in Brockley, South London to bring to life a worn down brick wall that faced their playing area. The mural was supported by
the London school of Muralism and funded through the crowd funder spacehive.
Chelwood Nursery is an open air nursery. The aim for the mural was to create something bright but yet calm that reflected their natural environment. We ran a series of workshops over a period of one month, dividing the workshops into children's workshops and parent/teacher workshops and ran them simultaneously. In the parent/teacher workshops which ran for approximately 1 hour they were given templates of the wall and were asked to draw what they might imagine journeying across it.
The Children's workshop was a lot more improvised
and made for some interesting conversations including carrot feet, flying pizza's and wiggly worms. The children were asked to talk about what they like about the outside and were given the opportunity to draw and make things out of play dough that they like. Mud and Bugs were the order of the day so we focussed on a design that would represent both elements. We also took some of the suggestions and ideas from the parent/teacher workshops and finally came up with a design for the mural.
The mural is split into two, the top half representing the outside. Various bugs are travelling along the wall going up and across pipes and windows whilst feeding off a large leaf which is growing in the middle of the wall as they journey to an unknown destination. The veins of the leaves are represented by the children's drawings. The nurseries Robin is perching at the top of the piping in the top right hand corner of the mural. The bottom half "Mud " is the home of the wiggly worm who are burrowing through the mud.
