Community art – A new chapter for illustration?
A
RANGE of talented illustrators have been using their skills to enrich local communities
by creating vibrant, engaging artwork for public audiences. These pieces can bring together a range of partners, attract new audiences into a range of different settings and can also give a voice and add value to local communities, helping to bring people together. Olivia Lomenech Gill, winner of 2025 Carnegie Medal for Illustration with Clever Crow, doesn’t remember seeing many murals when she was young but feels, “murals can help enrich children’s daily cultural and environmental experiences”.
Olivia has been working on an impressive fresque on the wall of a primary school in Bulat-Pestivien, Brittany. The idea for the fresque was part of a creative contract with the mayor who lent Olivia a studio in exchange for creating a mural on a local school wall as part-rent. “The initial concept was to visually profile the old trades of Bulat in a procession carrying their tools and representing the village’s history.”
The idea changed because depicting actual people caused concerns over potential politicisation.
The revised focus became horses, “specifically draught horses like the Breton horse, similar to the Suffolk punch. These form a procession, which like an Egyptian frieze, is seen in profile.”
The fresque suffered an initial setback after it was vandalised, but as Olivia explains, this created more opportunities for other local artists to also become involved. The work also incorporates a poem by Anjela Duval in both Breton and French, which “added a literary element that helped create additional meaning and resonance for children and with its place on the school wall”.
Olivia Lomenech Gill.
When the political situation allows, Olivia is planning a project where she wants to provide access to children’s books in libraries in Palestine. Her aim is to travel by land visiting different libraries along the way. She says: “Ideally what I’d like to do each time is to find a way to involve the community and children as much as possible. Having as much input as possible from library users and librarians would really strengthen the project.” Genevieve Aspinall has been working with libraries on murals in their
Jake Hope (@Jake_Hope) is a freelance development and children’s book consultant, and former chair of CILIP’s Youth Libraries Group (YLG) and editor of Our Rights!.
www.jakehope.org.
children’s sections, she was initially asked by her local library in Ansdell. She says: “I approach each mural by coming up with mock-up sketches of a few designs, and send this to the library staff to decide what they like about the sketches and if there is anything they’d like changed. Once the design is approved, then I paint the artworks on foam board panels, with acrylic paint, and they are pieced together and installed into the library space.” A special opening was held at Ansdell and librarians from the area were invited, which led to more commissions. Genevieve feels passionately about the role of public art, saying: “Artwork in community spaces is important to encourage people, specifically children in this case, to visit their local library and feel that it is a positive, bright and exciting place to be. Artwork in any variety of community space helps create a human connection with the people there, as it engages them with a handmade artwork specifically created to bring joy and happiness to the environment. It also hopefully inspires
Autumn-Winter 2025
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