Isabel's design a winner

Paint, paint and more paint, plus brushes and other assorted supplies will be coming Levin Intermediate's way in huge quantities soon, because it has won the intermediate school section of Keep NZ Beautiful's Wall Worthy competition.

Wall Worthy is a nation-wide mural design competition. The school was one of two finalists in the intermediate schools section of the competition and art supplies to help realise the mural are part of the prize, courtesy of Resene.

Winning means the school gets supplied with all materials needed to paint their mural on the side of a school building. This will hopefully be in place by the end of term three. The winners of the competition were announced late last Friday.

Levin Intermediate School's art teacher Kelly Moore said she encouraged her students to enter the mural competition and that resulted in half a dozen submissions, from which the actual competition entry was chosen.

Designer of the winning mural design is 11-year-old Isabel Paroli, one of the school's Year 7 students.

"The central focus is the school logo," she explained. "You can also see the many cultures of our community and school are intertwined in the mural. Tu tangata (stand tall) is our school motto. We gain matauranga (knowledge) by attending school. Respectful, resourceful and responsible are our school values. They are our three Rs," said Isabel.

The design is also inspired by the fact that Levin Intermediate is a PB4L school, or positive behaviour for learning, which means they are trying to build a culture of positive behaviour and learning for all.

And that's where the three Rs come in: resourceful, respectful and resilient (responsible), which are ways to help students measure their behaviour. Recently the school has changed responsible into resilient and that means Isabel's mural design will have to be adjusted.

While the school logo sits in the middle of the design, everything else draws into that logo, including the school's cultures and its three Rs. The school cultures are tu tangata, matauranga and kia haka, which are also end of year awards. Isabel's brother won the tu tangata award last year.

This mural was Isabel's first design, made with "a bit of thinking and advice from my mum, who was an art teacher", she said. The design also has a Kiwiana section, with a Buzzy Bee and Vegemite.

"The wall now seems much bigger than before," said Ms Moore. "We were planning to use a wall at the end of a field but on second thoughts we would like to use a wall within the school compound, where students walk by every day. "

The next job will be to figure out how to paint the mural on to that wall, she said. The design has a lot of intricate pencil markings and the space between the wall and the next building is rather tight.

"Time for the school community to step up and come up with ideas," said Ms Moore, who's been art teacher at the school for the past two years. Before that she was a classroom teacher for four years.