‘Our Langdon’

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

Langdon School’s Grade 6 classes have taken on the task of redesigning the outdoor arena with their own artwork.
Grade 6 teacher Lyle Weigum gave his students, along with the other Grade 6’s, the option after watching a movie that had similar characteristics to their project.
“We watched a movie called ‘Pay It Forward’ in school and the project basically started ‘what can we do to make Langdon a better place?’ and one of the ideas that we came up with was painting the outside of the outdoor rink,” said Weigum.
“They described it as, ‘it doesn’t look nice, the paint’s peeling,’ so they wanted to spruce it up and make it look nicer. Basically, the project has grown from there, scraping the old paint off and putting a fresh coat on … and (we) thought can we put stuff on it.”
The students worked with an artist to get approvals on their designs.
‘The kids worked with a muralist from Calgary, Vince Vandurme, and he came out to the school and they drew designs and they got tips from him, what are good mural designs. He then takes their designs and spreads them onto big sheets of paper,” said Wegium. “They’re going to take what he’s got, put that on the wall of the rink and we’ll paint that. There’s a Grade 6 team and each class has a team inside of that.”
The artwork will really depict the area’s image.
“The general theme is ‘Our Langdon’ and each class has a different theme. So one class shows Langdon sports, another chose Langdon: new and old and the other class chose prairie/western life,” said Weigum.
“I think the coolest part about the project is the kids have been the driving force behind it. There’s 90 Grade 6’s, so 11-12 years old, and they’ve been the ones that say ‘hey we want to do this and can we do this.”
The support from the community has been tremendous thus far.
“We’ve been working with the Langdon Community Association, they were my first contact when the kids said they wanted to do this and they’ve been enthusiastic. supporters. They contacted Rona in Strathmore and they donated some of the supplies that were required and Langdon Community Association covered some of the others,” said Wegium.
“Borbus Contracting, they’re one of the contractors that’s really helping us out, both for materials and providing some expertise.”
The project will be put into place on May 20 and 21 with the installation of the plywood, and the paintings will begin on May 22.
The project will be done by the end of the school year.