Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Public Art

A Hampshire pre-school has transformed a dismal underpass with children's artwork, writes Ruth Thomson.

Many children going to Badger Farm Pre-school in Winchester faced a daily trek through a graffiti-covered underpass just a couple of minutes' walk from the setting. Now the graffiti has gone and the children can enjoy looking at their own artwork as they pass through the subway.

The artwork includes the children's paintings, with houses, flowers, and butterflies, an illustrated number sequence on one wall and alphabet pictures on the other.

The underpass had been an eyesore for all the users of Badger Farm Community Centre, where their pre-school is based, but the idea for transforming it was that of pre-school assistant Jane Foster. She had been involved in a similar project with two local primary schools and approached Hampshire County Council with the suggestion of replicating the pre-school children's artwork on the underpass walls.

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