By Sophie Oxford, Design & Visual Arts Teacher and Zoe A, Grade 8 Student
‘A Dragonfly’s Journey’ is the latest community mural at Hong Kong Academy and is the culmination of two years of creativity and dedication from a range of HKA students and community members. The mural celebrates our school’s 20th anniversary and was concepted, donated and installed with the support of Stuart Harris, HKA parent and co-founder of Team Building Asia.
Student leadership takes many forms at HKA, and the mural project was a fantastic opportunity for our student artists to apply their creative, collaborative and communication skills. The project’s leadership team consisted of students from Grades 6 to 12 who were involved in concepting, designing and producing the finished piece. It was a privilege to see students draw in their own personal styles, share their ideas and appreciate the perspectives of others as we digitised the art and brought the composition together.
Consisting of 48 individual canvases, the mural was hand painted by students, faculty, staff and parents during a collaborative whole-school event at the end of the 2021-22 school year. One student artist, Zoe A, was particularly dedicated and involved in all stages of the process including introducing the piece to the community during Back to School nights.
“I am so grateful to have been a part of this experience and it will always be a valued memory I have from being here at HKA. This mural required a lot of collaboration and hardwork, butI am so happy with the final outcome. At the beginning of designing the mural I felt a bit overwhelmed, as the pressure of working with others to create an artwork that would be available for anyone a part of the HKA community to see was a bit daunting. In the beginning, we brainstormed different elements that represented our community. As I collaborated and shared ideas with my peers, we were able to come together with different components we felt would best represent Hong Kong Academy. It was so great to see so many different perspectives on our community and what makes it special. I enjoyed sketching different things like lanterns, dragonflies, city skylines, and of course the school’s famous red doors. I was very surprised how even though everyone had unique and different art styles, Ms Oxford and some of the older students were able to piece everything together to create a seamless composition.
Although designing the mural was fun, my favourite part of this whole process was the painting day, where members of the HKA community of all ages got together to paint and have a good time! On the day of the mural, my role was to supervise and help out the people painting at my station. There were two canvases per station and there was a mixture of secondary and primary students working together for hour-long sessions. I also helped transfer paints to other stations to make sure colors were the same throughout the mural. It is great to see the mural hanging in the school and I am proud that I was able to introduce it to parents during Back to School night. Overall, it was such a fun experience, and I’m so glad I had this opportunity!”
