Kensington Primary School’s winning artwork brings Christmas cheer to Docklands

Students at Kensington Primary School are all smiles after spreading the Christmas joy to Docklands with their creative work appearing on a pop-up Christmas display.

The students spent hours making colourful pieces of wrapping paper which have featured on giant Christmas boxes dotted around the Docklands precinct.

Using stencils, the two designs of traditional Christmas colours and colours of the rainbow revealed stunning patterns and shapes of Christmas trees and angels. 

Art teacher Elise Andrew said she was proud of the students’ efforts, adding they were “very chuffed” that their work had been chosen for public display, which was part of a City of Melbourne art competition. 

“Our art show had to be cancelled due to COVID restrictions, so this really was a lovely surprise,” she said.

“The events manager from Melbourne City Council said our designs looked like they had paid a graphic designer to do them. And to then be told that both designs had been picked was an extra Merry Christmas.”

Ms Andrew said the paper design was created out of hand-made printed papers made by the foundation students who were at the time exploring the art of author and illustrator Eric Carle.

“The initial idea was to have individual students submit their designs … it then became a collaborative effort, beginning largely with a collection of students who were children of essential workers and were attending school on site.”

She said due to the challenges of remote learning the students “jumped at the chance” when she was supervising the art room space during lunchtimes.

Chiara of Year 4 said it was “so exciting to know that everyone is looking at our hard work and it’s an incentive to keep going with art”.

“I’m really happy that it is on display, I worked really hard on it as did everyone else and it’s a nice surprise,” Talia, also of Year 4, said •