The Sustainability Mural

Dedicated students bringing the mural to life

THE THE SUSTAINABILITY SUSTAINABILITY MURAL MURAL

– A CAS Project

CAS is all about making real world connections, just like what Year 13 students Eve, Amelia, Geralyn, Lianna, and Vihastika experienced during their CAS project where they designed murals for a local company. Here’s their story.

T T his CAS project came to life when our art teacher, Ms Magee approached us with an amazing opportunity to design murals for a local company, Lestari Capital. Lestari is a small company located near our school that acts as an advocate for sustainable finance and works closely with companies to develop a sustainable marketplace by advising them on how to develop environmental policies.

Taking inspiration from Lestari’s mission, our designs attempted to encapsulate the three pillars of sustainability: economy, society, and the environment, while adding a touch of modern flair. Due to its relation to ‘Service’ through environmental advocacy, and its requirement for artistic creativity, we immediately knew that this project would be an incredible CAS opportunity.

THE DESIGN PROCESS

We created initial designs quickly but after early roadblocks, we soon learned the importance of constant communication with our client, Gabriel Eickhoff (CEO of Lestari), and organised a call with him to discuss our ideas. We reflected upon our initial designs and revised them to represent Lestari’s mission more effectively. We paid regular visits to the office, in order to understand the space we would be working on and it was agreed that we would combine our separate mural ideas into one piece that would represent the connections between society, the economy and environment as well as a second piece that displayed the company values of connection and conservation.

We also chose to use a professional monochromatic colour palette, incorporating accents of the company’s signature blue. The discussions we were involved in to get this point gave us a real insight into how the corporate world works.

OVERCOMING ROADBLOCKS

With the use of projectors, we completed most of the sketching and painting work during our October half term. However, we had underestimated the time that the mural would take, even with all four of us working together. Our project management skills came to the fore and with some rearrangement of resources during the following weeks, we skilfully cleaned our line work and finished the smaller details within the designs.

LEARNING IMPORTANT LESSONS

Our experience with this CAS project taught us the importance of time management, communication, and perseverance. As it was our first experience working with an external company, we were nervous about how Lestari would react to us as students since we were delivering such an important design that would be the public face of their company. With the guidance of Ms Magee, we were able to finish the project within our self-appointed deadline. Additionally, we were aided by the head of CAS, Mr Roberts, who helped us to develop our communication, prioritisation, and problem-solving skills. Overall, this CAS project was a challenging and ultimately very uplifting experience. We are now looking forward to doing another one! ■