Waltham Forest Children in Care Project
In summer 2018 Waltham Forest Council’s Voice and Influence Service commissioned NBAM for a project working with children in care. The brief was to creatively translate a pledge together with the young people to make it more engaging and easily understandable, especially for the youngest members or those less literate.
Working with artist Jason Hawkridge and using the existing colours of the brand’s pledge, we met with 10 young people aged 8 to 21. The artwork created would then leave the service with more inclusive versions of the pledge to be on public display, while at the same time make sure the users who felt more engaged as they had had the chance to take part in the design process.
Each piece of art would contain one word chosen by the young people as well as a selection of shapes. Jason showed the group around his studio and gave them some inspiration by demonstrating how wonderful art could be created by similar shapes that had a special meaning to the person. We spoke about how words and shapes would together give a stronger message and with this in mind each of the young participants got started. They were shown skills on how to measure, draw, scale up and professionally finish their A4 sketches to larger 1 meter square canvases.
Over the 2 days the young people worked extremely hard “I’ve not seen them so engaged in a project before”, voiced one of their regular key workers. It was clear that they were enjoying themselves, learning something and also getting to walk away with a tangible piece of change, their own piece of art. Their commitment was clearly visible by the wonderful pieces professionally completed whilst working with artist Jason Hawkridge.