Working with students, staff and parents at Phoenix School in Tower Hamlets, the brief was to create a piece of artwork for the new reception area. Every member of the school community was to contribute in some way and the only plan we had was the main image would be the phoenix bird.
Phoenix is a school for students with autism and social communications disabilities where expressive arts are central to the curriculum, led by the inspirational Paula Manning. It was important to design differentiated activities for a range of abilities.
These images show the early stages of development where we worked on a background for the bird using the idea of a fabric mosaic. We experimented with simple printing, collage and weaving.
Feathers were created using fabric and embossing foil, and the bird’s body was created using slices of rolled felt.
