In the project, dedicated to the landscape of our home, the Piana Rotaliana, the students transformed the walls of the cafeteria corridor into a visual narrative of the area: the castle, the Noce stream, the mountain profiles. It was a way to celebrate their roots and leave a tangible and lasting mark on the school, with a message of care and gratitude summed up in the phrase “We love our world.”
The goal of the project, which took place over an eight-hour day, was to enhance the students’ technical skills and have them work as a team to create a large-scale work, intended to permanently decorate the school walls.
Painting a mural together on the walls of the school in Mezzolombardo was a highly valuable educational and formative activity. The experience was conceived as a group activity, with a “learning by doing” approach. The mural was painted on the ground-floor wall, in the corridor leading to the cafeteria, next to the administration offices. The chosen subject was a stylized landscape depicting the Piana Rotaliana, with Mezzolombardo Castle and the Noce River.
Here the video of the whole work:
The group work was structured into a planning phase and an execution phase. In the first part, the students were introduced to the mural design and the challenges of enlarging the image. This highlighted the importance of having a precise plan, essential for creating an effective work.
The design phase involved the creation of a digital sketch: using the iPad with the Sketchbook program, it was possible to render the finished work, calculate proportions, evaluate the visual impact, and experiment with the relationships between colors and the environment. This tool allowed us to evaluate which color combinations would be most effective.
The most complex part was to enlarging the image on the wall, done using the squaring technique: partly by the teacher, partly by the students (in the lower areas). Once the drawing was transferred, the students painted the different areas following the original sketch.
The importance of organization was immediately apparent: working in large numbers on the same surface, the students had to agree on the distribution of tasks, the use of colors, and the management of spaces. Each student worked on a section of the mural (high, low, or intermediate), trying to collaborate without getting in each other’s way. This fostered autonomy and the development of a sense of collaboration to achieve a common goal.
During the first part of the day, after reviewing the project, the students moved on to drawing on the wall and applying the first colors. In the afternoon, the work continued intensely and satisfyingly: all the students completed their tasks with precision and commitment. The day concluded in the evening with the addition of textures, final decorations, and the inclusion of a striking phrase: “We love our world.” With these words, the students reaffirmed their gratitude for the beauty of the place they live in, rich in nature and greenery.
The students applied their skills with a sense of responsibility and passion. The end result was immensely satisfying, both for the quality of the work and for the knowledge that they had decorated a large wall in their school, leaving a tangible and lasting mark, created with their own hands.
The most interesting aspect of the group work was the mutual respect for each other’s space, time, and abilities. One of the most significant benefits was the opportunity to see our work emerge and grow through everyone’s contributions: an experience that made us realize that, alone, it would not have been possible to achieve such a significant result, while collaboration made the realization of this great collective work a reality.
