Moseley Art Mural Project

How the Moseley Art Mural Project Came to Life…

 

Pride in our Neighborhood

Community groups and residents in Moseley have considerable pride in their neighborhood and want to make sure that it continues to be a pleasant place to live and for people to visit. Therefore, they have come together to improve the appearance of vacant building sites in and around the shopping centre with murals. These are to appear on the security fencing that follow the perimeter of the vacant sites. We wish to develop a temporary landmark that celebrates living in Moseley, lifts the spirit of residents and attracts visitors to the village centre.

Developing the Project

Mural brief
We are now seeking to work with an Artist to develop a piece of artwork that will appear on one section of the perimeter fencing that bounds the former meteor ford garage. This work is to be sponsored by the current owners of the site, Tesco.

The approved theme for the artwork is to be “growth and regeneration”. Gardening and caring for the environment is a popular local residents and by considering these themes there is the opportunity to reflect Moseley’s diverse communities. In addition, this year Moseley in Bloom (a local charity) is promoting edible gardening and encouraging residents to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Therefore, we see an opportunity to celebrate our communities, their relationship with the environment and their desire to regenerate the derelict garage site.

We anticipate that Moseley in Bloom will also be able to contribute to improving the appearance of these sites by introducing hanging baskets, planting containers or window boxes. These could be incorporated in to the Artwork or used to complement the finished Artwork.

Artist Selection Process

There were many applications from artists to take part in the project. We decided to select only local based artists that would be commissioned to work on potentially 4 different mural sites in Moseley. We gave the artist a brief and the approved theme of ‘Growth and Regeneration’ to see what they could come up with.

Artists

AerosolAli

Local Kings Heath based artist, Mohammed Ali, came up with some very creative pieces that changed slightly as his trail of thought developed over a number of weeks. We were delighted with the final draft piece that Mohammed put together and decided that Mohammed’s artwork had to be displayed on the largest of the sites (Tesco Site).

Mohammed Ali is an award-winning Birmingham based street artist described as challenging the oft-heard term ‘clash of civilisations’ with his fusion of street-art and Islamic script, along with conscious message that speak to people of different faith traditions. He describe his work as ‘taking the best of both worlds’ and bringing back to the forefront principles that are fading away from our modern society. https://twitter.com/aerosolali

Layla Tutt

Moseley Based artist Layla Tutt is a Batik Artist and came to us with some of her beautiful batiks with images of fruits. The Batiks have been hung on a tree in the centre of Moseley Village.

Making Progress

Meteor Ford Site

Last week Mohammed continued working on the Meteor Ford site and worked hard to try to complete the mural for Friday. Unfortunately due to the unpredictable weather the work continues this week. Here are a few images I took of the progress that was made last week…

 

The weather managed to stay dry enough for the Mural to be completed on Friday! Unfortunately… within 24 hours of the mural being completed, just as we were planning the opening ceremony the mural was vandalized…

 

 

Determined not to let everyone’s hard work go to waste the Moseley community and volunteers pulled together to repair the artwork. Here are some images that were taken over the weekend (Saturday 17th August). Thank you to everyone who supported the project and to all the volunteers who came out to help!

 

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