How One NZ School Turned 320 Kids' Artwork Into a Wall Installation

Every school has the same problem with a whole-school art project. You want every child involved, you end up with 320 pieces of artwork, and then you have to do something with it that isn't a corkboard in the hall.

Liz Wilde, the librarian at Omokoroa No 1 School near Tauranga, solved it neatly. Every student in the school — new entrants through to Year 8 — made flowers and leaves. Those were mounted onto plywood as a single large installation for the library. And because a whole-school project always produces more than you plan for, the leftover artwork became a second installation on stretched canvases for the school office.

The office version is the interesting one. Ten 60 x 60cm canvases, each densely covered in cut-out flowers and leaves, hung as a grid on a dark teal wall. The result reads as one continuous garden across the whole wall, and children come into the office looking for their own piece.

As Liz puts it, it has become a discussion point for parents and visitors — which is a lot to get from leftover artwork.

Here's how to plan one.

Why canvas works better than you'd expect

A collaborative installation on plywood is heavy, permanent, and needs someone with tools. Stretched canvas solves several problems at once:

• It hangs like a picture. One hook per canvas, no fixings into block walls.
• It's modular. Canvases in a grid can be rearranged, added to next year, or split across two spaces.
• It has depth. Layered paper flowers sit proud of a canvas and cast shadows, which is what makes this kind of work look like an installation rather than a collage.
• It survives. A canvas can come off the wall and go back up. Plywood can't.

A grid of square canvases is the easiest layout to get right. Squares tile neatly, and you don't have to make a decision about orientation for every panel.

What you need for a school of around 300

• Stretched canvases — ten 60 x 60cm covers a large office or foyer wall. Buying in a six-pack is considerably cheaper than singly.
• Card or cartridge paper for the flowers and leaves. Heavier stock holds its shape when layered.
• Paint — poster paint for younger classes, acrylics for the seniors who want detail. Metallics and fluoros are worth adding for a few classes; they lift the whole thing.
• Scissors and PVA glue. More PVA than you think.
• A dark background — either a base coat on the canvases or a dark wall behind them. The Omokoroa installation hangs on deep teal, and the bright work sings against it. White washes it out.

Planning it across a school

Give each class a brief, not a template. One flower and one leaf each, any colours, produces far better variety than a worksheet. The unevenness is the point — a wall where every flower is different is worth looking at.

Expect 30 to 50% more artwork than you need. Every whole-school project overproduces. Plan a second home for the surplus from the start — an office, a staffroom, an entrance — rather than discovering it at the end. At Omokoroa the surplus became the office installation, and that is the one parents comment on.

Lay the canvases out on the floor before you glue. Arrange all the panels together and move pieces between them until the colour is balanced across the whole grid. It is far easier to fix a lopsided composition on the floor than on the wall.

Layer from the back. Glue the largest leaves down first, then build flowers over the top, overlapping the edges and letting some pieces break the edge of the canvas. Density is what makes it work. A sparse canvas looks unfinished; an overfull one never does.

Let the seniors do the composition. Year 7 and 8 students are perfectly capable of arranging a panel, and it gives them ownership of a project that otherwise skews to the juniors.

Hanging it

Hang the grid at adult eye level or slightly below — children want to find their own piece, and they'll happily look up. Leave a small gap between canvases so each reads as its own panel while the garden runs across all of them.

Two rows of four works well on a long wall, with any remaining panels continuing the run.

Why it's worth doing

The obvious benefit is that every child in the school is on the wall. The less obvious one is what it does to a space visitors pass through. A school office is somewhere parents wait, new families are shown around, and visitors sign in. A wall of children's work in that room says more about a school than any display board of certificates.

Supplies for a project like this

We supply schools across New Zealand and can do class and whole-school quantities:

• Signature Single Thick Canvas 60 x 60cm — six-pack
• Mont Marte Bright Poster Paint 250ml 4pc
• Signature Acrylic Paint Set 12 x 12ml
• Gallery Series Acrylic Brush Set 6pc
• Mont Marte PVA Craft Glue 250gm

Planning something similar? Email info@handymandy.co.nz with your student numbers and rough timing and we'll price it properly, hold the stock for your dates, and invoice the school directly.

With thanks to Liz Wilde and Omokoroa No 1 School for the photographs and for letting us share the project.