Pinjarra local and part-time artist Kate Beswick has rolled up her sleeves in the past couple of weeks to create several vibrant murals around the campus of Carcoola Primary School.
“I never get a chance to [paint] these days, back in high school I did it through school, I’d win district awards and stuff. It’s just a hobby now, really,” Kate said.
This may be her last art project for a while, as she commits to her university studies full-time.
Kate already paints the kindergarden window each semester, based on the theme the children are studying, so the murals were a natural extension of her work with the school.
Carcoola’s principal Sharon Albers-Smith said Kate had volunteered a lot of her free time designing and then painting the murals, which are vibrant reminders of the school’s core values.
One mural is based on the junior primary school’s Twiggles the Turtle character, who teaches students to “stop, breath, and say the problem”; and the senior school’s Traffic Light system, which teaches students to “stop, make a plan, and enact the plan”.
The other mural features characters that represent each letter in SMART, where ‘S’ is for strive to achieve your potential, ‘M’ is for motivate yourself to learn, ‘A’ is for accept challenge and leadership, ‘R’ is for respect yourself, others and property, and ‘T’ is for take care of the environment.
These are part of the national Kids Matter program.
“It teaches children how to recognise their emotions, and make good choices with their life,” Ms Albers-Smith said.
Paints for the project were donated by the Program Property Services, with free tinting by Dulux.
Ms Albers-Smith said that soon the murals will be joined by benches donated by Bendigo Bank: one Buddy Bench, and one engraved with the PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies) motto.
