Brookside Underground Art Gallery

20 March 2008

Young people in Brookside have refreshed their local centre by creating two new art murals as part of a community art project.

The second phase of the successful Brookside Art Galleries project was held during February half term and was open to all young people from the Brookside area. It follows phase one, which was took place in March last year.

The work began with design workshops at Brookside Youth Centre on Monday 14 January, where the young people involved chose hobbies as the theme for the murals and worked on three different designs, supervised by professional artists from AuniqueArt, a local art company. These were then put out to public consultation.

The murals were then completed over two days in February half term, on the side of Brookside Post Office at the entrance to the local shopping centre. The 13 young people who took part were supervised by staff from The Wrekin Housing Trust, Children & Young People's Services and Connexions.

The project was managed by the Wrekin Housing Trust's Regeneration Manager through a small steering group from the Brookside Partnership consisting of the Children and Young People's Active Involvement Service, Connexions for Youth, and West Mercia Police. Funding for part two of the Brookside Art Galleries project has come from The Wrekin Housing Trust and The Local Network Fund.

Yvette Greasley, Regeneration Manager for The Wrekin Housing Trust, said: "The art gallery created in Brookside last year successfully demonstrated that using art in this way does make a positive difference. None of the murals suffered any damage and no more graffiti appeared on the adjacent walls. The Partnership promised to give residents the opportunity to refresh the gallery with new murals after twelve months, if they could raise enough money and we're pleased that, with funding from the Local Network Fund, we have been able to continue this worthwhile project."


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