PLACEMENT / Manchester School of Art

At the end of January 2020, we welcomed students from Manchester School of Art, Lisa, Yasmin, Lucas and Matty, to undertake a 3 day placement in our studio. These four students were specially selected by their Foundation Lecturer, Ben Greenhalgh, and proved to be an exceptionally dedicated and creative team.

This placement was the first stage in preparing the students to assist with the installation of our largest fresco to date, the lobby fresco at The Green Rooms project in MediaCityUK, Manchester.

The itinerary included: an introduction to Aster Muro and our practice, a review of student mood boards, introduction to our equipment and materials, demonstrations by Charles, the opportunity to create their own 2m frescoes under Charles guidance, creative briefing on the MediaCityUK project, introductory training for installation, assisting the creation of a large-scale practice piece, reviews, photography and crit of practice pieces, a brief history of the fresco art form, and introduction to portable frescoes and other materials.

The students stayed in nearby holiday accommodation and were able to make the most of being in the beautiful rural Wye Valley with a walk to and from the studio each day. Being January, it was absolutely freezing, and we were impressed with how stoic and hard working the students were, and also with their endless enthusiasm, curiosity and ideas. Feedback from Manchester School of Art and the students can be seen on our Learn/ Students page.

As part of the placement, we were also pleased to treat the students to dinner out at The Burgershop in Hereford, where one of our frescoes, ‘Play,’ is situated. The practice fresco day was filmed by @samuelcallenfilms and can be found on our Films page.