Murals and Carvings for the Sight-Impaired in Derby

Adrian Farnsworth and Peter Lumley.

Markeaton Primary School is situated on the outskirts of Derby. It has about 350 pupils aged between 5 and 11 years, of which around fifteen are blind or partially sighted. These sight impaired pupils are fully integrated in mainstream classes, their needs being catered for by specialist staff working alongside the classroom teachers. The children also have access to a wide range of specialist equipment and are provided with suitably adapted materials which enable them to join in fully with class activities alongside their sighted peers.

However, although successfully included in the curriculum, the school building, which is a one hundred years old with two large playgrounds, caused some mobility difficulties for sight impaired children particularly at playtimes and dinner times. So in an attempt to create some orientation points to help the children navigate the school environment independently, we began some work in the grounds to remedy the situation.

The first phase of the project aimed to produce tactile-visual panels and objects at strategic points around the school grounds, with the needs of sight impaired and multiply handicapped sight impaired children in mind. The project had several aims; to provide orientation points on repeating sections of building structure and improve access and mobility by this process; to involve sighted people in considering the needs of sight impaired people and people with multiple handicaps; to introduce aspects of tactile communication to sighted people; to provide tactile & visual murals and objects for the sight impaired and sighted members of the school and local community; and to involve children, staff and members of the local community, both sighted and sight impaired, in a project involving design and making.

We decided to begin with a series of tactile murals on the walls. The first of the murals was completed in December 1996. It consists of cement tiles cast in clay moulds containing impressions of parts of the sycamore tree. A local artist - Deborah Allitt - worked with staff at the school, who have internationally recognised expertise in the field of tactile graphics, and the children, to produce the Sycamore panel.

Durability is very important when putting up any kind of mural or artwork on a building. Many buildings have murals painted on them with no thought to the future. If the wall is not carefully prepared, and the paint carefully chosen and applied, the artwork can degrade quickly, leaving an unsightly mess where decoration was intended, often with no easy way to restore the original brickwork. Our cement tiles were produced in consultation with professional builders, being of just the right sand-cement mix to give durability whilst retaining the fine detail of the moulds. The tiles were thoroughly waterproofed when dry. High-quality marine-ply panels were screwed to the walls, after first having preservative applied. They were mounted slightly proud of the wall, the gap being sealed at the top and sides, but being left open at the bottom to allow some air circulation. The tiles were then mounted on these panels using a slightly flexible tile adhesive. The gaps between tiles were filled with high quality grout, and a frame applied around the mural. The whole was then painted with good quality exterior paint, chosen for its ability to give good weather protection combined with an ability to retain the fine tactile details of the tiles. The colour scheme was chosen to maximise accessibility to the partially sighted.

After the success of the first mural, four more were produced over the next few years, the willow, the crab apple, the beech and the oak, the latter using coloured cement rather than paint.

The next phase of the project aimed to create a safe area in the playground containing tactually interesting surfaces and objects for the children to explore. A local building firm constructed a 'tactile wall' for us. This consisted of lots of types of bricks, with various structures including ceramic pipes built into it. Within the area of the tactile wall, a sixth mural was made. An area of wall about one and a half metres on a side had a cement skim put on it (mounted on a steel mesh frame). Whilst this was still wet, children pressed their hands into it to leave prints. Hundreds of small ceramic tiles (made by the children), ceramic faces, shells and buttons were then applied with tile cement, and some areas painted.

Soon after this an old telegraph pole was taken down on the site, a length of this was carved into a totem pole, and mounted within the tactile wall area. This is mounted in a tactile brick surface, to warn children they are about to bang into it!

The next challenge was the old bike shed. The school has two large playgrounds, and this old open-fronted shed offered the only shelter in cold windy weather. It was, however, dark and dirty. The shed offered three large walls to work on. It was decided that it was practically and financially impossible to line these walls with tactile features, and so a compromise was decided upon. The whole of the bike shed walls would be painted with an ordinary mural, with tactile features integrated into it. The walls were in a poor state, and so it took a year of spare-time work to repair and stabilise them, before adding an undercoat of white paint.

Whilst this was going on, two beech trees were felled on the school field. We wanted to use parts of the trunks to make seats for the bike shed, and so two lengths of trunk had a large slice chain-sawed off to produce a flat edge to stop them rolling. These slices - four two metre lengths - were stripped of bark, and patterns carved into them. These were then given liberal coats of linseed oil, and mounted on the walls of the shed to create tactile features, and being integrated into the final mural as tree trunks in a wood. The final painting was done with bright colours, as the shed was always in shadow. The beech trunk sections had seats chain-sawed out of them, and the surfaces carved with patterns. The shed was finished off with three picnic tables, again with their surfaces carved, and additional tactile features added including a couple of wooden sculptures.

Last year a parent converted an area of overgrown shrubs into a scented garden. In the centre of this is a commercial cast deer with its baby. A gravel path winds its way through the shrubs providing both tactile and auditory feedback as the children explore the area.

Recently a safe play area for KS1 children has been created. A range of commercial play furniture was chosen by the children and installed in the Infant Playground including a wooden train and a set of activity panels. These provide opportunities for both sighted and non-sighted children to play together while developing their gross motor and social skills.

These ideas were further applied at Central Nursery, our feeder nursery, which also has blind and partially sighted children, two wooden columns were decorated, one with canes and ropes, and one with macrame using coloured, artificial fibre cord. Ceramic tiles were also fixed around the site to provide areas of tactile interest.