Funding for a community mural in the pedestrian and cycling underpass near the Three Parks subdivision and roundabout on SH84 has been approved by the Wānaka Community Board, with local artist Chrissy Wickes set to project manage the installation.

Board member Chris Hadfield said it made sense to have an artist working on the project and engaging with local schoolchildren, rather than leave the underpass to graffiti artists.

The underpass, which opened to the public last month, was welcomed by parents of children at the new Te Kura O Take Kārara school, many of whose walk to school involved crossing the busy state highway. 

It is therefore fitting that Wickes, whose many local art projects include the dinosaur in the children’s lakefront playpark and, most recently, mural art for the eight classroom pods at Wānaka Primary School, is working with children and staff at Te Kura O Take Kārara to develop the underpass piece.

Wickes said she was “super duper stoked” to be part of the project, which was in the very early stages of development and set to get underway at the beginning of the next school year, hopefully reaching completion by the end of the first term. 

With a wide-open design brief - her main focus being that the mural invoked “community” - Wickes expected that children from different classes would have time to work on their own ideas for the mural in their art classes, and would then have a multi-day field trip to the underpass to bring it to life. 

Read edition 1004 of the Wānaka Sun here.