REFLECTIVE JOURNAL
Azha Mohamed 0335889
PHASE 1 : PLANNING
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Before the experience
Thinking about the things that might happen, I feel like it would be a challenge to know exactly how much paint we would need and in what ratios, as it's a wall mural and different parts will have different amounts of colour. This will in turn bring up some challenges with the allocating the budget. I feel that, in order to prepare for this we must come up with a very clear idea of what we want to paint or create.
During the planning
When we started planning, it came to light that we need to have a good coordination between all the groups since all works must come in harmony with each other to create a well executed transformation.
Therefore we exchanged our ideas and discussed on how we can interconnect our designs and coordinate the colours to match each other.
Being a design student it was a fun experience browsing through ideas for wall paintings and it exposed me to lots of new ideas as well.
After the experience
After presenting our proposal for the wall and floor transformation, we realized there were quite a number of flaws in it. It was also noted that we needed to be more specific and certain on the details.
It was a good experience bringing forth our ideas to the lecturers and colleagues as we had discussions on how to improve the ideas further and correct the existing errors in the proposal.
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If I could do something differently the next time, I would do a lot more research and obtain a lot more data of the place such as measurements, materials etc.
A takeaway from this experience would be that a lot of brainstorming and accurate data are required to come up with an exceptional proposal. Furthermore, good communication within the workforce is crucial in finalizing ideas.
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PHASE 2 : TRANSFORMATION
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Before the activity
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Drawing lessons from the errors made in some of the previous visits to the site, we had to conduct a meeting to ensure that all the activities on the day would go smoothly.
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In the meeting we distributed the works among the group members and allocated time frames for different works.
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Leaders were appointed for sub groups to further enhance the efficiency. Likewise I was in charge of the wall mural team.
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During the activity
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Work started after an hour of arrival at the site and everyone was engaged in some kind of work. The interior group started with painting all the walls with the base color, light mint green.
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A challenge faced during this was the fact that the walls and windows had a lot of dust and other residue on them, making it difficult to apply the paint thoroughly. We overcame this by cleaning these parts using a scraper, as we went on painting.
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After applying the base coat and allowing it to dry, the mural team proceeded with drawing on the two walls on both sides of the entrance.
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Next we mixed a number of paints to obtain the colors required to complete the mural. Then we proceeded with painting the cactus themed drawings until all of them were finished.
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After the activity
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Things could possibly have been executed a bit better but I think everyone did a really good job on the day. Worked non-stop for many hours, it was nice to see but also extremely tiring.
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After finishing the wall mural, I looked around all the works carried out by the other groups on the same day; creative learning aid walls, new furniture, new books, freshly painted exterior walls and stairs.
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It was a very wholesome feeling in the end, to know that these kids will be getting to see this entire transformation and experience it.
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If I could do something differently the next time, I would distribute different steps of the painting among the team for a more efficient outcome.
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A takeaway from this experience would be that it requires lots of effort, work distribution and time management to pull off a whole transformation and that things would always go smoother and efficiently with good planning and task allocation.