Kiwi kids throughout the country have been involved in the City Rail Link (CRL) in Auckland after children between five and 11 years were invited to paint and draw images that will be fired onto ceramic tiles to decorate walls in a new underground railway station.
“Children are fantastic dreamers with great imaginations, and we want them to fire up those skills as artists and give us pictures of where they would like to go by train once our underground railway is built,” says the chief executive of City Rail Link, Sean Sweeney.
The children’s artwork will be displayed permanently at the Aotea Station, which will be New Zealand’s busiest when it opens in four years.
“Tens of thousands of people will walk past the children’s art wall every day on their way to work, or to home, but we have a very big wall to fill,” says Sweeney.
“We’ve already got 3000 fantastic and colourful pictures, but we need thousands more to fill the space and make the wall an exciting part of the station.”
Aotea is one of two new underground stations being built on the CRL that is planned to open in 2024.