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Artist Coco Lom celebrates Hackney's community spirit in 30-foot mural

Artist and designer Coco Lom's distinctive style mixes a bold, bright colour palette with black and white patterns, often created using a photocopier.

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Coco Lom's 30-foot mural for Newport School in Hackney featuring bold geometric patterns in red, blue, yellow and black with white, including wavy lines, stripes and a red circle, with a child standing in front.

Her driving force is to help people find the magnificence amongst the mundane, opening their eyes to the powerful colours and patterns that surround us. And she put this philosophy into practice on her latest project: a 30 x 9-foot playground mural for Newport School in Hackney, east London.

The Year 4 pupils at the school helped design the mural through a series of creative workshops led by Coco in December. The children, aged eight years old, shared ideas about how best to represent the school's core values of respect, aspiration, care, integrity, creativity and being community-minded.

Coco and the youngsters also took inspiration from the location of their school, using the different shapes and patterns they could see around them. From the repeated rectangles of their classroom windows to the stripey shadows of their playground fencing, they searched for shapes big and small, high and low. Returning to the classroom, the pupils documented their findings through big chalk drawings on their playground floor.

The resulting mural, comprising of wiggling lines, stripey spots and bold patterns, was completed in eight days. "It was so exciting to see all the different visual responses, and I was so impressed by how thoughtful the children's creations were," says Coco. "I'm so happy to have been able to open up a new way of seeing and creating for these young, curious minds."

It's not the first time Coco, a Hackney resident, has collaborated with local institutions. Last year, she was asked by Hackney Arts to brighten up the route for 3,000 participants in the Hackney 5k Run, which involved chalk-spray-painting the grass track with colourful and playful designs underfoot. She has also designed murals for Shoreditch Studios and The Beer Shop in Peckham and was recently commissioned to paint six community hedge planters in Charlotte Road, near Old Street.

Next year, she's planning to head to New York after a leading international hotel chain invited her to be Artist in Residency, and to host a series of creative workshops, inspired by the shapes and patterns within the city's world-famous architecture.

Pupils gathered around artwork displayed on the ground, showing colourful drawings and patterns created during Coco Lom's design workshops at Newport School
Child using a fork to draw patterns on paper during a creative workshop, surrounded by coloured tape, shapes and art materials
Children's hands work on creative workshop activities with coloured paper, tape, scissors and pattern designs spread across a work table
Child holding blue chalk above striped chalk marks on playground tarmac, wearing blue trainers and jacket
Artist Coco Lom on a ladder working on the Newport School mural, painting white striped patterns on a blue section above a large red circle and black-and-white striped areas
Detail of Coco Lom's mural featuring bold yellow, black, light blue and cream geometric and organic patterns on a textured wall surface
Detail of Coco Lom's mural showing a white panel with black circles alongside a bright yellow panel with black and white geometric shapes
Coco Lom's mural for Newport School featuring black and white wiggling forms with pale dots against a bright yellow background, flanked by patterned panels in blue and red
Colourful mural by Coco Lom featuring bold yellow, blue and red panels with black and white organic shapes and striped patterns on a playground wall in Hackney
Coco Lom mural on a building exterior featuring a blue section with white striped circles, red circle, and black panel with white wavy lines and the artist's name
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