From over 1,690 Little Ideas to Something Much Bigger - BIC Unveils Learner-Created Murals Across Gauteng

There is something special about seeing your own work displayed on a school wall. But when you are a primary school learner and the picture you coloured weeks earlier has become part of a huge permanent mural alongside the work of hundreds of your classmates, it feels even bigger.

This August, more than 1,690 learners across four Gauteng primary schools are seeing the results of their creativity come to life as BIC South Africa unveils a series of large-scale murals created from hundreds of individual pieces of learner artwork. The murals mark the culmination of BIC South Africa’s 2026 Let Your Colour Out campaign, which invited children to forget about perfect pictures, expected colour combinations and staying neatly inside the lines, and instead show the world how they see it.

During the initial mass-colouring experience, every learner received their own section of a much larger design. Using BIC colouring pencils, crayons, markers and pens, they were encouraged to make it entirely their own. There was no picture to copy. No instruction that the sky needed to be blue. And no expectation that one child’s section should look anything like the next.

Now those hundreds of individual pieces have been brought together, transformed and returned to the schools as permanent murals.

“That One Is Mine!”

For the learners, the reveal is about much more than seeing a colourful new school wall. It is about searching through hundreds of marks, shapes and colours and finding the section they created. It is about pointing it out to a friend, teacher or parent and proudly being able to say: “That one is mine.”

“When we started this project, we wanted every child to understand that their creativity has value,” says Amy Whittam, Stationery Marketing Manager at BIC South Africa. “Seeing their work become part of something this big makes that message tangible. Every learner contributed something different, and the mural only works because all of those different ideas are there together.”

Across the completed artworks are careful patterns, unexpected combinations, bright splashes of colour and creative decisions that could only have come from children given permission to use their imaginations freely. Rather than correcting those differences, the murals celebrate them.

A School Wall Created by the Children Who See It Every Day

Children spend a significant part of their young lives at school, yet much of what appears on classroom and school walls is created for them rather than by them. These murals are different.

Every day, learners will walk past a piece of artwork that contains something they created themselves. For some, it may be a carefully shaded section. For another, an unexpected purple tree, a collection of patterns or a colour combination chosen simply because they liked it. Together, these choices have created something no designer could have produced in quite the same way.

“Children do not all think, communicate or create in the same way, and we should not expect them to,” says Whittam. “That is what makes these murals so powerful. When you stand back, you see one artwork. When you move closer, you see hundreds of individual personalities. We want learners to look at these walls and know there was space for their idea too.”

Why Creative Freedom Matters

Creative activities can sometimes be viewed as separate from learning, but drawing, colouring and making are part of how children explore ideas, solve problems and communicate. When children are given an open-ended creative task, they make a constant series of small decisions. Which colour should I choose? What happens if I combine these two? Should I follow the line or create something completely different? There is no answer sheet telling them whether they are correct.

That freedom encourages children to experiment, consider different possibilities and develop confidence in their own decision-making.

Research into childhood creativity has linked creative experiences with skills including divergent thinking, problem solving, communication and emotional development. It can also provide children with another way to express themselves, particularly when they may not yet have the words to explain exactly what they are thinking or feeling.

“Children already have extraordinary imaginations,” says Whittam. “Our role as adults is not always to tell them what to create. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is give them the tools, the space and the confidence to show us.”

More Than a Mural

The finished artworks will remain at the participating schools long after the excitement of the reveal has passed. New learners will walk past them. Teachers will teach alongside them. Friends will point out favourite sections. And the children who helped create them will know that, for a moment, they were given a school wall and told that their ideas belonged there.

The murals are a colourful reminder of what can happen when children are trusted to create without worrying about whether their picture is neat enough, realistic enough or similar enough to everyone else’s. More than 1,690 learners started with individual pieces of paper. Those pieces are now part of something shared, permanent and much bigger than anything one learner could have created alone.

“Let Your Colour Out is ultimately about celebrating individuality,” concludes Whittam. “There is something incredibly powerful about hundreds of children creating completely different pieces and then seeing that those differences can still come together beautifully. We hope every learner who sees these murals remembers that what they bring to the world matters.”

From hundreds of crayons, colouring pencils, markers and pens came hundreds of different ideas. Now those ideas have a permanent place on the walls of the schools where they began. Somewhere within each mural is a section a child can proudly point to and say: “I made that.”

About BIC

BIC is a global leader in stationery, lighters and shavers, creating simple, reliable and accessible products used by millions of people around the world. In South Africa, BIC stationery has supported generations of learners as they write, draw, colour and bring their ideas to life.