In keeping in line with one of Petal Primary School’s main focuses – social and emotional learning of the students – school officials have instituted a search for artists for the inaugural Petal Primary School Mural Contest, which will see murals painted on the inside walls of the school.
Applicants for the contest should be current or former students of the Petal School District, who will be asked to depict in their work the school’s spirit of perseverance, grit and the will to succeed. The mural must also incorporate the district’s Friendly City Focus Words, which are words – such as integrity, gratitude, ambition, dependability and motivation – that are displayed in various schools and businesses throughout Petal.
“We use a lot of those words throughout our day here on campus, so we want the campus to have this kid-friendly feel with these murals,” primary school principal Tessa Trimm said. “I think our kids can relate to murals; you see murals going up all over the community, (like the) one on the side of the fire station and there’s one on the Bradshaw Agency (building).
“So we want the kids to feel some of the things they see out in the community, and we really thought it’d be cool if we could get former Petal students – kids that have walked the halls of Petal Primary – to paint some of these murals. We’re repainting the building right now because we’re getting this streamlined, gray look to get everything to look nice and clean, so we thought we’d have this contest to begin with.”
The contest is open to current and former Petal School District students, who are invited to submit a full-color mural design via email to tessa.trimm@petalschools.com. Submissions for the first mural are due by June 17.
The top design will be selected by the Petal Primary School team, and the winner will be announced on June 20. The first of the new murals will be centered around perseverance and success, and primary school officials will supply the needed paints and materials for the work.
The mural must be 10 feet wide and 8 feet tall, with a bright, colorful kid-friendly design which will be painted directly on the wall.
The winning artist must be available to paint the mural between June 27 and July 8.
“We just put it out there to see how many responses we could get,” Trimm said. “We’re hopeful that we get a lot of kiddos that submit some designs, and maybe they’re not all chosen, but we’re going to pick one to start with.
“And I feel like we’ll have this pool of artists that we can go back to and try to get them to really paint across our campus. The other thing is, we want our students to know that ‘hey, somebody that was just like you painted this, and you can be an artist one day, and you can express yourself. So that’s really the whole premise behind it.”
Officials are planning for more murals in the future, with the hopes of eventually featuring seven to 10 murals throughout campus.
“We’re starting small, so we’re going to do this first one,” Trimm said. “Then after we do this, then we want to open it up to community members.
“We feel like our PTO can maybe reach out to some parents that want to participate, or maybe there’s a local business that wants to participate and paint a mural around these social/emotional things. We just want our kids to see that there’s lots of artists around town, and to really bring this community feel into our campus.”
