Art teacher Helen G S Forde retired from Portobello High School 12 years ago but she returned to the school today to lend her voice to the growing call for a new home for the mural she created.
She told The Edinburgh Reporter : “I remember the pupils who helped me create the mural very fondly. Some of them were actually my Higher and A Level pupils and I had taught them right through senior school and got to know them pretty well.
“I would like to see it hung somewhere that people can see it. It would be lovely in the new school but it just can’t go there. Portobello Town Hall would be the nearest big building. Somewhere that it’s not just kept in a cupboard!”
She designed the panels as she wanted exam pupils sitting in the hall to have something interesting to look at instead of just a clock.
Her timetable included a double period with fifth and sixth year pupils who were studying Interest Art, and she enlisted their help. The mural was first of all designed on a long strip of paper and then she scaled it up, allowing the pupils to paint it and then put the whole thing together on the wall. The painting depicts the History of Art and Architecture from Cave Painting to Pop Art and was created on hardboard primed and painted with emulsion paint supplied by Colonel Rose of Craig and Rose paints. The panels are fixed on wooden battens which the Design and Technology department made specially.
The mural is made up of ten panels each one eight feet high and four feet wide so the entire mural is huge! It now needs a new home as the school will be closing next month when the pupils move to their new building which is scheduled to be complete after the October break.
Headteacher Ruth McKay took up her post last November and told us it will be impossible to take the mural with them when they move. She said: “Unfortunately we just don’t have a space that is going to be suitable for it in the new school. It’s very much a part of the history of Porty High and that is why we are really keen to try and find it a good home for the future.
“It is certainly a disappointment for us that we can’t move it with us because it is one of those things that everybody remembers.”
Local councillor Councillor Maureen Child said: “I think it should find a home. It is huge so that is a bit difficult but it is part of the history of this school and generations of kids who did this work.
Can you help give the mural a new home? Then get in touch with the school by email admin@portobello.edin.sch.uk
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