New Spencer Park Primary School mural promoting healthy eating based on student designs celebrates canteen

Spencer Park Primary School students had a helping hand in designing a new mural brightening up their canteen which was unveiled ahead of the inaugural celebration of WA Canteen Day on Friday.

The mural was officially finished this week and is based on the themes of healthy foods and making healthy choices.

It features a backdrop of green leaves and fresh fruits with anthropomorphic fruit and vegetable characters, as well as an ice-cream and cheeseburger to send the message that many foods are OK to eat as part of a varied diet.

Local artist Scott Mahar ran workshops with the students to come up with designs for the mural before painting some of the students’ artwork on to aluminium composite boards.

“We did a session with the big kids and little kids and I selected some of their drawings,” Mahar said.

“I couldn’t use all of them but I sort of picked the best of the bunch and chucked them up there.”

Gone are the days of Chiko Rolls and soft drinks at the tuck shop, the primary school’s canteen serves up fresh and healthy food made partly with produce grown in the school’s garden, with food scraps returned to the ground as compost.

The mural was unveiled ahead of the inaugural celebration of Canteen Day WA on Friday, a day to recognise school canteen workers and volunteers.

SPPS canteen manager Nicole Arta initiated the school’s new artwork by asking the P&C to “beautify” the canteen, and said she was “blown away” by the completed mural.

“We’ve fought long and hard to keep it going because there’s not many school canteens that are open any more, a lot of them are being outsourced to businesses,” Ms Arta said.

“So we’re quite proud of our canteen and we try and do lots of fundraising for it over the course of the school year, and we also try and utilise more and more so the school garden project.”