At St John’s Collective Worship is an important part of our day. To enhance this experience and to provide focus on our Christian Values the whole school community worked together to create our beautiful mural depicting what we hold dear at St John’s. Our Faith Group played an integral part in the whole project sharing their ideas and views.
We have been reviewing and developing our Christian vision at the school. It has been an exciting process that all stakeholders have been involved in. The new mural is, in many ways, a culmination of this journey. It beautifully depicts God’s love at the heart of our school, our motto of believe, inspire, achieve, our inclusive ethos, our core values of respect, service, honesty and perseverance, our care of the earth and our close connections with our church and local community. We pray its vibrant colours, graphics and Bible quotes will bring hope and joy to all in our school community.
We were delighted to welcome Bishop Richard Cheetham to bless our new mural during Collective worship with our vicar Vicky Maunder. It was an ideal opportunity for our children to find out more about the role of the Bishop through a question and answer session.
The mural was put together by local artist Hannah Hines she said:
“Would any of you be surprised if I said that I didn’t quite know how I was going to create this mural when I was first asked to make it?
The more time I spent developing my ideas, the more I realised that the words I was trying to integrate into the picture (from the St John’s school motto) could guide me… “Believe. Inspire. Achieve.”
Mrs Esua, Mrs Singh and Rev’d Vicky had all believed in me when they asked me to create something special. I drew lots of inspiration from the meetings I had with the school’s Faith Group, the Bible stories that were picked out to represent the school’s Christian values and the links to some beautiful religious art that Vicky sent me as suggestions.
Together, we began to achieve a lot that was needed to make the project happen. But there was still the challenge of how to make it. There was a limit to the digital drawing programme I frequently used: its output wouldn’t have a high enough resolution to be printed at the right size. So, I did my research, found a new programme, kept trying to learn how to use it and kept believing in my abilities until I achieved a good result. It didn’t even take that long in the end as I found I could build on previous knowledge and experience.
There is something for everyone in this picture. Even if you don’t immediately recognise yourself in one of the characters, you may see an activity that you can do, like a handstand, or a local landmark you like. And you are all represented by your House birds: kingfisher, wagtail, goldcrest and heron. If you can’t remember what some of the Bible stories are about, or what the values mean – like “perseverance” – then have a closer look… next to each you’ll be able to find some helpful insects. This spider is trying and trying - persevering - to build its web.
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