Shape the future: How mosaics are firing up pupils

Creating mosaics can transform a child's experience of school

Jake Jones, eight, is busy fitting a small, irregular square of purple ceramic into the mosaic of a magpie's extended wing. Alongside him, his grandmother, Rosie, is filling in the bird's claws with fragments of something blacker. "Some boys like doing football and sport," muses the tousle-haired Jake as he brushes glue on to one side of the tile he is holding, and manoeuvres it into the jigsaw spread in front of him. "But I prefer concentrating on something like this. I just love making things." Rosie nods her approval. "He was so full of this when I met him this afternoon that I had to come up and see what it was all about," she confides.

It is 4.15pm on a Friday at Coldfall Primary School in Muswell Hill, north London. Although the bell went ages ago, there is still a smattering of children, parents and even the odd teacher working on various extravagant and colourful bird mosaics that are laid out on tables around the upstairs art room. On every surface round the edge of the room are boxes of squares and fragments of ceramic, some neatly cut, others cruder, some donated by companies such as Fired Earth, others by well-known ceramicists. Most have been recycled.

As the children and grown-ups work, there is an exam-like calm, the natural corollary of the attention to detail required to fit together these three-dimensional jigsaws. But there is also an undeniable buzz you don't find when children are doing tests. They keep stopping to step back from what they are doing, wipe their hands on their aprons, and take in the progress they've made.

Keeping a watchful eye on proceedings is Maud Milton. She is a ceramics graduate who, in 1999, founded Artyface to bring mosaic-making into schools, and is leading a team of six assistants at Coldfall. "This is something where every child can excel," she enthuses. "We've had children in other schools where we've worked who have been struggling to fit in because of language barriers, or who haven't blossomed in the classroom, or who think they don't like art. But once they start making a mosaic, they just love it and keep coming back at break-time and after school. It can be addictive, and it can really give them confidence. I have seen children who haven't been doing well at school get a real lift because they can look at what they've helped to make and say with pride: 'I did that'."

Artyface grew out of Milton's experience, fresh out of Cardiff University, in running ceramics residencies, first at adult education colleges and then at schools. Mosaic-making is "about everyone being involved, everyone joining in and taking decisions collectively, and everyone taking ownership of what we end up making", she says. "That's why we stay open during breaks in the school day and after school, so the children can come back and their parents, grandparents and carers, even neighbours, can join in."

This community-based approach has been a classic word-of-mouth success. In the past month, for example, Artyface has worked in three primaries across London in Chelsea, Tower Hamlets and Walthamstow to make three separate mosaics – a total, Milton estimates, of 100,000 tiny tiles.

It's a not-for-profit organisation – with bases in London and Somerset – and the cost of bringing it into any school is from £5,000 to £20,000, depending on the length of the residency, the number of helpers and the final goal. Some want mosaics, others sundials, others decorated outdoor furniture. At Coldfall, they are making a large mosaic to decorate one wall of the playground. Each class in the school is named after a bird, and so the finished product will feature a menagerie of every one of them. "What I keep thinking," says Joseph, a Year Six boy working on a multi-coloured eagle, "is that when I leave Coldfall in the summer, there's going to be something I've helped to make left behind that I can come back and see."

Funding has been available to pay for Artyface residencies from Awards for All, a Lottery grants scheme, but that is coming to an end. Often, though, the school's Parent Teacher Association (PTA) will fund-raise to pay for it, and Milton is more than willing to roll up her sleeves and guide heads over where they might access the small pots of money needed to make a project happen.

"I had heard from colleagues about what a positive experience having Maud in their school had been for them," says Coldfall's head teacher, Evelyn Davies. "We had an old mural painting in the playground that was faded and flaking, so the PTA agreed to fund 50 per cent of the cost of replacing it, and the rest I found from the school's budget. The children are loving doing it. I believe strongly there has to be more room in the curriculum for this sort of creativity."

Plus, Davies adds, pointing out the green flag flying over the reception area, Coldfall is an accredited eco-school, so the recycling aspect works especially well for them.

The first stage of any residency is for Artyface to work with pupils, staff and parents to identify a theme for the final piece of work. Recent examples include the environment, local history and endangered animals. Then pupils start drawing designs that become the templates for the mosaics. Finally, groups of around 10 from each of the years involved take turns to go to the art room, and work with Milton and her team to create the mosaics.

One of the Artyface team, Jane, a retired primary teacher, is working with Joseph on the eagle. "What we do covers every aspect of the curriculum," she says. "There's verbalisation, when we explain how to make the mosaic. There's mathematics in counting out the pieces needed to fill each section and in the patterns and shapes. Depending on the themes, there are bits of history, geography, science. The list is endless, and they have such fun while they are learning."

On the next table, Christian from Year Six has just finished the legs of an ostrich and is examining his handiwork with pride. "You can just relax in here," he says. "There's no pressure. It doesn't really feel like school."

For more details, visit www.artyface.co.uk