• 8 months ago
As part of a town wide project, Creative Crawley been working with over 350 Crawley residents and 7 professional artists to make unique designs for 6 murals across the town.
The locations for the murals are in the town centre, Manor Royal Business District, Bewbush, West Green and Broadfield.
We spoke to artist Eloise Galloway about the mural on Kingsgate car park in the town centre.
Transcript
00:00 We did a call out to artists and 126 artists from around the world sent us proposals for
00:11 murals, which is kind of amazing. 126 people want to work in Corley, artists want to work
00:16 in Corley, which is fantastic. And then we worked with the playmakers to decide, we set
00:22 some criteria and decide who we would shortlist. Eloise was one of the shortlisters. So we
00:26 shortlisted 20 artists and then the playmakers chose out of those 20 which 6 artists we'd
00:33 commission. And so this mural is part of a series of 5 other murals, 6 in total around
00:40 the town that will become a mural trail when they're done. Two others are being installed
00:46 at the moment, one in the Sunken Tunnel in Eubish, just near Dawson Square, the shops,
00:51 and then another one which you could see if you're here over by County Mall, which you
00:57 might have walked past, but if you go that way.
00:58 Hi, I'm Eloise Gillow and I'm here painting a mural in Corley. I'm here in the town centre
01:09 at the moment painting this one. And it's part of a bigger project of a few murals that
01:14 are happening in Corley at the moment. And I'm going to be painting two, this one in
01:18 the town centre and one in the neighbourhood. And yeah, this one's been inspired by workshops
01:23 that I've done with residents from Corley and developing the themes that they suggested
01:30 that they wanted to celebrate about the town. So I've got a tree, very prominent in the
01:36 mural, which reflects the trees that are all around this space that we're in right now.
01:40 In fact this tree is specifically that one over there. I'm painting from that tree.
01:46 And then there's also people because one thing that came through from the workshops with
01:51 the residents was how important community is here and how much people look out for each
01:55 other. And so I've got people wandering around the green space and then on the other side
02:01 you can see there's a mother and child hugging. So that sense of togetherness and community.
02:07 They are all local people that have gone into this mural. And that was from a photography
02:13 workshop that I ran with local people earlier in the year to get inspiration for the mural.
02:18 But the tree on this side, we don't see their faces so the idea is that they're representative
02:23 of local people generally. Yeah, so I've come from Barcelona to paint here and I got involved
02:29 because I saw they'd done an open call for muralists to apply for this job. And it looked
02:35 like a really great project, especially because of the community process. So with this opportunity
02:41 to work with the community in order to develop the ideas which I think can help to make really
02:45 meaningful murals for the place. So I saw the open call and I applied and I'm lucky
02:50 to have been chosen to paint here. The other mural I'm going to be painting is on Broadfield
02:55 Community Centre. So it's in the neighbourhood and right in the heart of the neighbourhood
03:00 on this community centre. So that'll be in a couple of weeks time. And will there be
03:04 a similar kind of theme with it or will it be something different? There is a similar
03:07 kind of theme, yeah, of community and conversation. Yeah, so it's very much people focused as
03:14 well. But it won't have the tree, it's a very different shaped wall. So I've got 10
03:19 days in total for this one but I spent a couple of days preparing the surface, so putting
03:24 on a transparent sealer, primer to help the wall be less absorbent. So I think in total
03:31 it'll be about 8 days painting. So lots of work each day.
03:35 I'm the murals producer, I've been working with Creative Crawley since August I think
03:40 it was. So the process that Louise was talking about, I've kind of been involved each step
03:45 of the way. And then when it comes to the installation I just help oversee all the artists
03:50 as well. But I think it's been really great working with the Crawley residents and different
03:55 people because there's a real passion to see whatever it is that we're discussing
04:00 in workshops and things come to life. And especially being down on site as well, we've
04:04 got some really amazing feedback where people say "Oh this is just what we need!" and
04:08 it's sort of brightened things up. And some of them I'm like ticking off, this is what
04:11 our aims were. So it's brilliant to see from August to now things come to life. So
04:16 yeah, we're kind of halfway through the process, this is our third one, and then we've got
04:22 a couple more to do as well. So yeah, it'll be great to see what everyone's thoughts
04:26 are when it's all finished. It's really interesting to see, you know, it's quite
04:30 new the things that we're doing, but talking to, you know, whether it's the councils or
04:34 different building owners, I think there's a real want to make a change which is lovely
04:38 to see. And then hopefully this is the first of many mural projects because I think now
04:43 we've had a few different inquiries about "Oh I've got a wall to do a lot of mural
04:47 on!" So I think hopefully we can just be brightening up the rest of Crawley.

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