They are back behind their desks, and the budding van Goghs at Northwood have stowed their brushes and palettes away in readiness for their next season of daubing.
The cohort of a dozen muralists had ventured out to Inanda Primary School as part of Northwood’s Grade 9 Community Connect Week Outreach programme. Under the guidance of Design teacher, Nomusa Godoma, they set about patching and preparing the chosen classroom’s walls for bursts of colour and design. Nomusa explained: “A sense of community is at the heart of who we are. The Outreach programme brings much-needed assistance to others in need of support. The mural-painting project, which took the “Young Squires” 3 days to complete, was just one of a range of community and environmental initiatives our Grade 9s undertook.”
Inanda Primary is a beneficiary of The Domino Foundation’s Life Skills programme. Northwood, a near neighbour of Domino’s, has partnered with the NPO on a number of occasions and the happy relationship provided an excellent platform for the students to show their caring to the learners at Inanda.
One of the artists, Joshua du Preez, described how the project had impacted him: “The Outreach programme is compulsory for all Grade 9s. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but all the fun of the cleaning, the preparing of the wall’s surface, then the sketching the outlines of the designs and finally painting in the bright colours was great fun.” His fellow creative, Mark Quinton added: “And we all know that our murals will bring such pleasure to the children who learn there.”
Domino’s Thembeka Gumede, the go-between in putting the exercise together, said Northwood’s providing a stimulating learning environment for the Inanda pupils was greatly appreciated. She invited other schools interested in partnering with Domino in making a difference in then lives of underserved people, to contact her (connect @ domino.org.za) to find out about opportunities in all seven of Domino’s programmes.
