EARLY IN September, Coolum State School put out a call for artists, it said, ‘Are you artistic? Have a bit of spare time on your hands? Love helping your local school?’ But it wasn’t any old project we needed their help with. We let our community know that our Student Councillors had been very busy coming up with some great ideas regarding how to beautify our school. The area they felt most needed improvement was our senior toilets. They are dark and dingy and needed some talented artists/painters to help them plan some creative designs, inspiring quotes, and implement and coordinate the project to brighten it up. We offered to supply the paint and we needed the artists to supply the talent.
To our delight, the call to arms was answered by three local community artists. Owen Cavanagh from Solearte which is located out in the Quanda estate precinct was first to respond. Owen is a Sunshine Coast Australian who has worked on the coast for many years, and he specialises in surf art murals and jumped on board to support our Coolum students. Owen kindly encouraged Billie Baxter to support us, and we were also fortunate to have a school parent, Josh Harris, known for his awesome graffiti art, come on board.
Owen Cavanagh and Josh Harris worked together with our students to create a two-stage plan of attack to bring some colour to this run-down area. At the end of November, stage one took place. Owen and Josh took the students’ ideas and a blank wall and began the transformation. The Student Councillors got their painting smocks on and joined them. Plenty of onlookers admired their work and after a few hours, our new artwork was complete – an amazing sunset scene of Mount Coolum with waves at the forefront. We are incredibly proud of our new mural and the Preps will get a prime view of the artwork.
We would like to offer a huge thank you to Owen and Josh for making this happen. Without the gift of time and skill given freely by these amazing artists, this would not have been possible. Our Councillors were thrilled to be invited to help and see the first stage of the improvements come to life. We are very lucky that there will be a stage two where our third artist, Billie Baxter, can contribute her skills and time to enhance the girls’ bathroom with a second artwork and Owen will present the boys with their own bathroom mural. Please keep a watch on our school’s Facebook page for more news.
