The class worked with Tony (and, later on in the project, Mick) to create their own 'Ijele' that reflected aspects of their community that they were proud of. The piece was created in three main sections.

The lower section depicted local characters and professions that were valued. The class began by listing those that they wished included ranging from the Lollipop man, their teacher and the local doctor to their own parents, the school caretaker and fire-fighters. Each child drew up one of the figures, cut it out and screen printed it onto a fabric panel. When they were dry they painted and mono-printed them through a screen with transparent blinder.

The centre section featured animals from proverbs and followed on from work carried out with Sola and Ayo around proverbs. Each child in the class selected an animal from a proverb ,drew it and coloured it in. Eight different animals were then chosen and the artists re-drew their picture simplifying it for print and then cutting it out as a paper shape. They then hand painted an abstract coloured background onto individual fabric pieces, placed their paper shapes on top and screen printed them so the shapes stood out as bright, colourful images.

Featured above are a monkey, an owl, a bat, a peacock and a fox. The other three chosen animals were a tortoise (shown on the PRIDE MASK right), a lion and a mouse.

Can you work out what the proverbs for these 8 animals are?

Click here to go to the literacy page to check your answers.

Move on to upper section (the top part of the PRIDE mask)