About Us
Our Story
Artmongers has been painting murals in South London for over 20 years. During this epic mural making journey, we developed a process of engaging community groups in our creative process. We managed to engage a large part of Lewisham´s population creating over seventeen murals in the borough.
Young artists started to gravitate towards what we were doing, and many reached out in search of advice or to volunteer with us. We noticed that passive advice was not effective enough to kickstart these potential young muralists. Much more support and education was needed if they were to become practising mural artists, and so the idea of the School of Muralism emerged.
Our course provides the tools and understanding of how practitioners can have a positive impact in society, while practicing their artistic skills and eventually make a living off it.
The concept of the school is a space where practicing muralists pass on valuable skills to the new generation and create a mutually supportive community of artists, change makers and cultural entrepreneurs
We invited other active professional artists in the field, also based in South London, to contribute to the learning process of our students: Adee (Artful Dodger) Gary Drostle, Lionel Stanhope. We have also recruited a few of our outstanding graduates to also teach in the course: Nadina Ali, Shauna Blanchfield, Liv Wright, Al Leys and Amaechi Anolue.
After a successful round of crowdfunding, we were able to set up the school. Three pilot courses run through a period of eighteen months, delivering 36 scholarships, 33 student-led new murals, 6 school-led murals, over 200 participants involved, 96 sessions and 288 hours of teaching. To improve our approach, we evaluated each stage with Imogen Slater (The Art of Regenation). You can read the evaluative review here
Our course is constantly evolving and its sustainability is too, We now run a hybrid model, where students play a part of the cost and we apply to funding to be able to offer scholarships to people who really want them and cannot afford the course. Our fourth course was the first one that students payed a fee, which has increased commitment from students and the prospect of the school continuing to grow.
Our Future
Going Forwards, we recognise that LSoM has to become independent from Artmongers and stand alone as an organisation. Our plan is to have an organic transition period that takes us from ‘Founder lead’ to a fully independent educational charity. We envisage this transition to be completed in 2029/30.
We want to continue our partnership with Goldsmiths and to create an Endowment Fund so LSoM achieves perpetual funding and can focus on improving its course delivery for aspiring muralists in the UK.